


go west

by ssstrychnine



Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: (and of course like weird internal conflicts or whatever because... it's me so), Angst, Fluff, M/M, Post-Canon, Road Trips, Slow Burn, some v v small implied homophobia, v background stan/mike and ben/bev
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-10
Updated: 2018-11-01
Packaged: 2019-01-15 19:10:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 24,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12327069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssstrychnine/pseuds/ssstrychnine
Summary: richie and eddie finish school, drive to san francisco, change their lives ft. hair braiding, a fake las vegas wedding, waterfalls, bumper cars, and approx. 3300 miles.





	1. portland, maine

**Author's Note:**

> so i was writing this and thinking it'd be maybe four parts and the first part would get them to chicago but then it didn't even get them out of state. so who knows how long this will eventually be. [there's a road trip playlist here](https://open.spotify.com/user/1232608950/playlist/4BVu7sjmwVmIGCAADCB1Hn) that has some of the songs richie's tapes have, including the song the title comes from, and some of them are probably anachronistic but i think i stopped around 1996. it's not important. i'll probably add to it as i go.

_And it feels like I've got something to prove_  
_But in some ways it's just something to do_  
_My friends turn me around and say_  
_You go west, young man  
__liz phair - go west_

 

They leave on a bright dry morning. Eddie’s been packed for days already, but he’s still sure he’s forgotten something, or everything. His bedroom looks empty, bare floorboards and a hollow closet, swept of any signs of life, and he knows it’s not forever, but something about the way the sun shines clear through the windows, unbroken by anything, makes it feel a little like he’s never coming back. Maybe he shouldn’t. He knows Derry isn’t really his, knows he doesn't want it anyway, but it’ll still be strange to leave.  
  
He walks down the hall to his mother’s bedroom, coldly closed, like it has been for days now. He’s pretty sure she thinks that if she doesn’t speak to him then he won't leave. He knocks and there’s nothing and he knocks again and there’s the sound of a choked back sob, so clearly deliberate he’s angry with her all over again.  
  
“I’m leaving,” he says, through the door. “If you’re not gonna come out then-” She sobs again, dramatically forced, and Eddie drags his knuckles along the door frame, kicks at the skirting. “Fine, Ma, I’ll... I’ll see you in a few months.”  
  
He turns away, takes the stairs two at a time, like ripping off a band-aid.  
  
Everyone’s there to see them off, except Bev of course, because she’s their destination. Across the country in San Francisco, flowers in her hair. And there’s a strange sheepishness to everyone, in the way Ben is scuffing his shoes along the pavement and in the way Stan keeps fiddling with his cuffs, because it’s only really half a goodbye, or a quarter of one, or not a goodbye at all. Ben will join them at the end of the summer. Bill will start university in the fall and that’s in New York, but somehow just leaving Derry alone feels kind of the same as being together, even if there’s a whole country between them. Stan and Mike are staying, at least for awhile. Mike’s farm is on the edge of everything anyway, somewhere just slightly outside that weird Derry bubble. Safe and sound.  
  
“Ready to burn rubber?” Richie asks, emerging from behind Eddie’s car, bent double and dragging a battered orange suitcase behind him, something from the seventies with flip locks and scratched leather and faded band stickers. Maybe his mum’s, once upon a time. And full of rocks, apparently.  
  
“Ready to drive carefully,” Eddie mutters. “Ready to respect the road rules and not get us killed an hour out of Derry because I stare at every single fucking thing I pass when I’m supposed to be looking at the road.”  
  
They pack up the last of their stuff. Richie’s orange suitcase and the one Eddie had been forced to steal from his mother, dusty robin’s egg blue with yellow daisies clumsily embroidered down one side that kind of make his heart hurt. Letters for Bev from all of them and a tape made by Bill and a book from Stan, a softly penciled dedication on the inside cover. A cooler bag of medicine that'll go under the drivers seat, just in case. Painkillers and NyQuil and band-aids and a brand new inhaler, because Eddie's weirdly convinced that as soon as they get out of Derry something in him is going to break and he'll immediately revert back to the kid who is always one step away from dying. Richie doesn't say anything about that, just pushes his glasses up his nose, just inspects the NyQuil carefully.  
  
“If you drink enough of this,” he says, after a moment, “you can get high from the dex... the dex something.”  
  
“Dextromethorphan, Jesus,” snaps Eddie, snatching the bottle off him, putting it back in the bag. “And the guaifenesin will make you cough up all your organs, probably. What idiot taught you about DMX?”  
  
“Uh, it was definitely you, Eds,” says Richie, leaning close to tug on a piece of his hair, grinning crookedly, and Eddie supposes he's probably right about that, rolls his eyes and pushes the bag back under his seat.  
  
And then they're done, ready to go, and Eddie turns on his feet, turns again, presses his palm to the silver curve of the driver's side mirror of his car. He wants to look up to his mother's window, but he’s sure that if he does he'll be lost, pulled back inside somehow, like she's the sun and he'll always be stuck orbiting. Richie touches his elbow briefly, leans into him like he's going to say something but then changes his mind and is gone, to link arms with Ben and pull him, laughing, in a circle. Eddie licks his lips, fumbles in his pocket for his chapstick, drags it across his lower lip, beeswax and honey.  
  
Under morning sun, they say their goodbyes, and it's weird, scuffed shoes and pushed back hair again, all the awkward ways teenagers move when something sentimental needs to happen, even though they've been family for so long now. Stan, of all people, breaks it. He lunges at Richie and hugs him fiercely and Richie seems a little bewildered at first, but then he lifts Stan off his feet and spins him, even though he’s taller and it almost topples them both over. Stan kicks him in the shin when he manages to pull away, and then he turns to Mike, who tucks him into his side, grinning broadly.  
  
“Having second thoughts about giving us all your Lonely Planet books, huh Stanny?” Richie teases.  
  
“I have second thoughts every time I speak to you, Richie,” says Stan, into Mike’s shoulder, and then to Eddie he says, “don’t let him piss off any biker gangs or join a cult or whatever.”  
  
“I’m not his keeper,” says Eddie, just as Richie says, “Eds’ll look after me.”  
  
They grin at each other, all of them, sunlight caught in their smiles, and they hug, all together, like they’ve done before. Wet and cold and terrified but kept together by their love, down in the dark, underneath Derry. When Bev left too, sixteen and desperate, on the edges of the school field, wet grass and damped down cigarette smoke. And now, Eddie’s hand tucked soft against the collar of Mike's shirt and his other arm around Richie's waist, gripping the wash-worn cotton of his t-shirt.  
  
“See y-you soon,” says Bill, quietly, leaning into the hollow space created by their bodies, to punch Richie gently in the chest.  
  
“In a flash, Big Bill,” says Richie.  
  
Eddie and Richie leave. In Eddie's car, straight certain lines, silver and chrome, with the turtle painted by Bill in Bev's black nail polish, a shell of geometric shapes, small on the front passenger door. Where Richie usually sits, where he's sitting now, hanging out the window and waving and yelling to their friends. Eddie glances at them in the mirror, Ben leaning into Stan, waving sweetly, and Bill with his hands in his pockets, ancient at eighteen. An old soul, maybe, but Eddie's also seen him laugh so hard he cried, has also seen him drunk and dancing with Mike at the quarry, after dark, to Prince, diamonds and pearls.  
  
“In a flash,” says Richie again, sitting back properly in his seat. “Ed's you look like you're going to a fucking funeral.”  
  
“No I don't,” mutters Eddie, focusing on the road again. No one's dying except Derry.  
  
They near the edge of town quickly, the border sign, and Eddie feels so strange, like there’s something inside him about to burst. Neither he nor Richie have ever been outside of Derry, not for anything more than a day at a time or before they were old enough to remember it. He doesn’t know why he does it, but he reaches blindly across the space between them, and Richie seems to know what he’s looking for because he meets him halfway, takes his hand and squeezes it. They keep holding hands as they pass the Derry sign, and Eddie feels a little bit like he’s been cut open and laid out, but Richie’s hand is warm. And nothing changes, neither of them die, the road doesn’t end or loop back around and send them into town again, it just keeps going. Eddie sighs, lets go of Richie’s hand, runs his palm over his thigh.  
  
“Wanna run the sign down?” Richie asks, swiveling in place, leaning out the window so he can look back.  
  
“Nah,” says Eddie. “Not without the others.”  
  
It’s not immediately interesting, driving. It’s just more of what they know from Derry, a little greener maybe, more water towers, more windmills. Less of something sick and evil under everything. Eddie wants to stare at it all anyway, wants to hang out the window and inhale it. There’s something he loves about the road underneath him, the way speed turns everything into lines of colour, a mess that makes sense. Still, he’s prim about driving. He checks his blind spots and he keeps his hands at ten and two. More than a million people die in road accidents every year, his mother told him that. Most of them between the ages of fifteen and thirty. It didn't seem like bullshit.  
  
Next to him, Richie winds his window down all the way and sticks his whole arm out into space, surfs the air with his palm. He’s made more than twenty mix tapes, a shoebox full, labelled for the stretches of road they’ll be driving down when they should be played. He keeps them under his seat like Eddie keeps his medicine under his. Play this between Chicago and St. Louis or play this after the Grand Canyon or play this if you get lost. It’s arbitrary, mostly, something to do with the way Richie feels when he looks at a place on a map, but he treats it like gospel, and Eddie doesn’t mind it. Richie knows music, knows sound. Maine is guitars and sweet simple lyrics. Break up songs about shared clothes, songs about the older siblings neither of them have, _go west young man_. He sings along to everything, voice scratchy and off key and so familiar it sounds sweet anyway.  
  
They stop regularly, because Eddie thinks they ought to. Because Richie sees things on the side of the road he wants to investigate and because they’re supposed to be being chill about this. As chill as either of them are capable of. A road trip. No set places to stop beyond the obvious. Just maps and road signs and obeying the conventions of horror movies where teenagers in cars die, just in case. They only really have to get to Portland anyway, on their first day. So they stop at a weird gift store selling souvenir clam shells with googly eyes glued to the top and pipe-cleaner hair and Eddie has to drag Richie away so he doesn’t buy ten. They avoid the main roads, drive through small towns, buy milkshakes and sing along to Richie’s music. They stop for lunch, just outside the city, sit on the hood of the car to eat.  
  
“So, how’s it feel Eds, being away from your beautiful mother?” Richie asks, lying back across the windshield. “I know I’m fucked up about it.”  
  
“Shut up, Richie,” hums Eddie. “She didn’t say anything, didn't even come out of her room.”  
  
“Because she’s the fucking devil.”  
  
“Nah, she’s just-”  
  
“I hate her.”  
  
“I know.” Eddie fiddles with his sandwich bag, seals the zip-lock seam carefully. “I don’t think I hate her. I mean... do you hate your parents?”  
  
“Sure, sometimes. I’m not sure my mum’ll notice I’m gone.”  
  
“I hate her,” says Eddie, and Richie laughs. Eddie leans back on his hands, pressed against the sun-warmed glass, and part of him is thinking that maybe their weight will break it, but another part of him knows that cars are built to withstand more than two idiots eating sandwiches. He thinks about their parents, about what happens to kids given too much attention versus kids who don’t get enough. Well. Isn’t that an easy way to cut it? Kind of too easy, really. Like saying Bill’s obsession with finding Georgie came only from his parents' silence. Like saying Bev’s strength came only out of the way her dad treated her.  
  
Driving into Portland, they get their first look at the ocean. Wide and grey-blue, somehow stormy even though the sky is bright. It reminds Eddie of a quilt he used to have on his bed, the way he could never get it smooth, no one could, not even Stan with the hospital corners he cut into bedspreads. It reminds Eddie of the sky in Derry before a storm, swollen with thunder and bristling with lightning. There are strings of tiny yachts moored to jetties, jutting out like ribs from a spine, and where the sand is visible it’s ashy gold and tumbled over by a thousand pairs of feet.  
  
“Let’s go to the beach,” says Richie, so they go to the beach.  
  
They stay there the whole day. A crowded stretch of chopped up sand and a rickety looking pier, lined in bright lights and arcades, a Ferris wheel behind them. Richie laughs at a t-shirt with a red lobster claw across the front and the slogan _so shucking fresh_ for so long Eddie buys it for him just to shut him up. He gets changed immediately, in one of the public bathrooms, and it suits him, weirdly, a cheesy t-shirt against his ripped jeans and scuffed boots. It’s cute, thinks Eddie. It shouldn’t be, but it is.  
  
There are too many people on the beach to find space, but they walk through the sand with their shoes off, kicking gold into the air. Richie picks up rounded pebbles, marches down to the water and skips them across the ocean, and most of the don't get far but some hit the waves and throw white foam into the air. Eddie picks up pretty shells, striped pink and white, and puts them in his pocket with some thought to giving them to his mother, for her to decorate photo frames with.  
  
On the pier, later on, Eddie gets a high score on the strength test machine and Richie thinks that's perfect, drapes himself around his shoulders, trying to squeeze his biceps, laughing when he pushes him away, dancing across salt-smooth decking. He looks neon-stained and wild with the air and Eddie can't help being caught up in it too. They win each other prizes, a tiny pink water pistol for Richie and a feather boa for Eddie that he slings around his neck, that flutters behind him as they walk, soft green, quietly losing feathers like a trail of fluffy bread crumbs.  
  
In gets dark and they end up back on the sand, sitting together, looking out across the ocean. The light from the pier catches the rising curls of waves, marks of colour curving up against the black water. Eddie can still see the horizon, the sharp black of the ocean turning to the velvet black of the sky. They've taken their shoes off again and Eddie digs his toes into the sand, cold now, like a completely different substance to the powdered gold from the afternoon. He might like to put his head on Richie’s shoulder, he thinks. It wouldn't be that weird. He leans forward and braces his arms across his knees instead, bows his head against the salt air.  
  
“We should just sleep here,” says Richie. “On the sand, y’know? Sleeping bags and shit.”  
  
“Sand gets everywhere,” murmurs Eddie. “We can sleep in the car, if you wanna be rustic.”  
  
“Deal, Eddie Spaghetti,” says Richie, knocking the back of his knuckles against Eddie's hand.  
  
It's an old nickname, a familiar annoyance, but Eddie waits a beat to long to give the proper response. “Don't call me that,” he says, quietly, resting his cheek on his arms so Richie doesn't see he's smiling.  
  
In the car, they drive a little further out, some place they're not likely to get any attention. They push down the back seats and clear the suitcases out of the trunk and put them in the front. They roll out their sleeping bags and pillows and really, Eddie is pretty sure they should stay in a motel for the first night of the trip, but at least he knows his car is clean. Stan hadn't been weird about it like he was about Richie's old truck anyway.  
  
They lie together, in their separate sleeping bags, in their shared space. With the seats pushed down, the car reminds Eddie of his empty bedroom, the place he'd left behind with his mother, hollowed out and dark. Maybe she's already rifled through the stuff he's left behind, trying to find proof of all her worries.   
  
“Your car is too short,” whines Richie, rolling onto his side toward Eddie, curling into himself.  
  
“My car is exactly the size it should be,” murmurs Eddie, shutting his eyes. “Go to sleep.”

“Gonna...” Richie makes a noise in the back of his throat, thoughtful and rough. “Gonna be close quarters for awhile, huh Eds.”  
  
“What?” Eddie opens his eyes, squints through the dark. He can't see Richie's face properly. He wants to reach out, touch him, figure out his expression with his hands. “What the fuck are you talking about?”  
  
“I...” Richie laughs, strange and pitchy. “I’m just worried about the smell, y’know?”  
  
"If you fart I'm calling the cops."   
  
This throws Richie into a fit of giggles, like he's drunk on night air, and it's infectious of course, because everything about Richie is infectious, and Eddie laughs too, and covers his face with his hands. He feels young, suddenly, like they're kids again, play fighting or dunking each other under the water at the Quarry or fighting ancient evil. They've always been a mess together, a mess of limbs and touches, stupid arguments and worse endearments. Richie rolls closer, even though he's already far too close, and Eddie feels like there's something inflating under his ribs, something that he wants more than anything he's ever wanted in his life, and that it must be in San Francisco, waiting for him to arrive and peel back his skin to see it. Then Richie's hand finds its way into Eddie's hair and Eddie stops breathing. Richie's blind in the dark, like a mole, so Eddie stays frozen, trying to figure out what the fuck he's doing, but then he finds his target, and pinches Eddie's cheek, because of course he does.   
  
"You're so fucking annoying," groans Eddie, pulling away. Richie laughs again and rolls onto his back.  
  
"'Night Eds," he says. "Love of my life."  
  
"Shut the fuck up, Richie," says Eddie.  
  
They fall into silence slowly, and Eddie listens to Richie's breathing even out as he falls asleep. Even with the seats pushed down, the back opened up, Eddie's car is nothing really like his bedroom. Not with Richie there to fill up all the empty space. They should have called someone back in Derry, Eddie thinks, to let them know they made it to Portland. They should have called Bev in San Francisco, to tell her that they'd started, and so Richie could scream at her down the phone about how he'd seen the ocean and bent it to his will or whatever weird shit they're always talking about. Music mostly. Music and clothes and their feelings about urban spaces and how road trips should work. Eddie chews on his lower lip, gropes around the space next to him, where he'd folded his clothes up. He finds the feather boa, so soft it feels kind of like it can't really exist at all, especially not in the dark. Richie won it shooting hoops and Eddie had mostly picked it just to make Richie ask for it. He'd fluttered his eyelashes at the guy who ran the basketball game and the guy's lip had twitched but he hadn't said anything. It had made Eddie feel a little sick, honestly. Maybe he should wear it every day, or at least until it's bald of feathers. Winning Richie the water pistol was definitely a mistake. 

They'll cross state lines tomorrow, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, New York. Or maybe they'll go some other way, maybe they won't even get to Albany, maybe they'll go Boston instead even though that had never been part of the plan. For pie and donuts. Or whatever the fuck there is in Boston. They have a Lonely Planet guide somewhere, one for every state they'll cross, because Stan is kind of a maniac. Eddie's going to miss him. Is going to miss all of them. The dirty limericks Ben could make up at the drop of a hat, even though he blushed furiously every single time, and the way Mike could always,  _always_ , beat Richie at every single game he loved, and how much that delighted Stan. Bill's quiet confidence and the easy way he could pull things from thin air, stuff for them to do when they were bored or tired or desperate. Bev, in another world but still always a part of them. Eddie curls up a little smaller, rests his cheek against his palm. It's gonna be easy, he tells himself. It's gonna be easy to cross the world.   

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (dw this definitely isn't gonna be one chapter for every night they're travelling holy shit i'd die) lmk what you think thank you ♡


	2. albany and niagara falls, new york

Eddie quickly finds there isn’t really a way to get comfortable when you’re drifting across a country. Because there’s no time to get used to anything. Not the salt air of Portland or the squared windows and flat topped buildings of Worcester, Massachusetts. Sand turning into glass. They cross from one state to the next and every time, Eddie imagines that they’ll hit glass, a physical border not just a line on a map. They’ll shatter themselves on the edges of places and maybe, soon, they’ll hit something they can’t break through. Back to Derry after all, back over everything they broke by leaving.  
  
Richie’s driving when they cross into New York, and he drives fast, like there’s something biting at his heels, but he drives careful too. He’s always careful when he has passengers, no matter how reckless he is when he’s alone. Eddie remembers his old truck, the way he’d scrape his tires up against the curb coming to pick Eddie up, but keep precisely between the lines when they were in the truck together. And it’s like that now too, he keeps himself carefully hemmed in by the paint on the road, eyes sharp behind his glasses. He gets sunburned though, hanging his elbow out the window. Just a strip across his arm, like a warning sign, and when they get to Albany and check into their motel, Eddie gives him aloe vera gel from his medicine bag.  
  
“Wear fucking sunscreen,” he says, watching Richie squint at his arm, wrinkle his nose, carefully apply the gel. “You’re gonna peel and I don’t want your gross dead skin floating around in my car.”  
  
“Hate to break it to you Eds, but your car is full of my gross dead skin already, and my hair, and my fucking fingernails, probably. Maybe even my pubes, if we’re being honest.” He snaps the bottle shut, drags the pad of his thumb over the curve of his forearm one more time.  
  
“Shut up, Richie,” says Eddie, without any heat to his voice. “This is why Stan hates you.” He drifts around their room, inspecting the windowsills, the backs of the curtains. If there’s mildew or mold they’ll have to go somewhere else, he’s not getting black lung on a road trip.  
  
“Stan loves me,” sniffs Richie, throwing the bottle of aloe at Eddie, grinning when he catches it easily. “And so do you.”  
  
They leave the motel, because Richie wants to explore, because they have time. It’s barely midday and they’re not leaving for the falls until the early morning and Eddie wouldn’t mind staying in the motel, clear of mold, and sleeping the day away, but Richie’s got it in his head that there’s something in Albany worth seeing.  
  
“Excelsior,” he says, dramatically, on the road again, pointing a finger to the sky.  
  
“Hmm?” Eddie is half dreaming, full of sun, intently focused on the rapid rate they’re swallowing up the painted lines on the asphalt.  
  
“New York state’s motto,” says Richie. “Means um, still higher, some shit like that.”  
  
“Still higher,” murmurs Eddie. He’s slipped down in his seat, as he leaned against the window, so he shuffles back, straightens up, rolls his shoulders back against the upholstery. His seatbelt is digging into his neck, so he adjusts that too, presses his fingers to the warm skin underneath the nylon band. Still higher, he thinks. They’ve barely even started.  
  
“Why'd you look like you're figuring out the secrets of the universe?”  
  
“Watch the road,” says Eddie, grabbing for the water bottle rolling around at his feet. He pretends not to think of sun-warmed plastic and carcinogens leeching into the water and takes a drink. “Why the fuck do you know New York’s state motto? I mean, what possible reason could you have for knowing that?”  
  
“I learn a lot of dumb shit so you’ll ask me about it Eds,” says Richie, grinning crookedly, probably a lie but maybe not.  
  
Albany is pretty, Eddie decides, as they pass another building that looks straight out of a fairy tale. Everything is clean brick, edged in white, and wrought iron lamp posts and cobbled pedestrian streets and fucking tulips everywhere. Richie snarls along to music that doesn't fit the city at all, _jet boy jet girl_ , but Eddie kind of likes that too. A song about an angry queer kid against a backdrop of upstate New York sweetness. That's Richie all over. Maybe Eddie too. Maybe both of them together.  
  
“Oh my _god_ ,” cries Richie, suddenly, startling Eddie so badly he knocks his head against the window.  
  
“The fuck-”  
  
“Huck Finn’s Playland,” says Richie, pointing at a garish sign on the other side of the road, a kid in a bucket hat and dungarees, a red arrow all lit up.  
  
“No way,” says Eddie, shaking his head. “No way are we going to a storybook theme park, unless you want it to be the only theme park this whole trip. You can say fuck off to Cedar Point if we go there, Richard.”  
  
Richie is silent for a moment, chewing on his lip, tapping at the steering wheel. The music fills his empty space. “First of all, Cedar Point isn’t a theme park, it’s an amusement park,” he says, eventually, unnervingly thoughtful. “Because it only has seasonal themed areas.”  
  
“Oh my-”  
  
“And second of all, fuck it, I wanna go to Huck Finn’s Playland.”  
  
“Richie-”  
  
“Seriously, I wanna see you on kids’ rides, all cute and shit.”  
  
“We’re not going there, it's a playground for children.”  
  
“Eddie,” Richie pouts. “Eddie please.” He reaches over, blind, eyes still on the road, and he shoves Eddie gently, palm flat and close against his arm. He looks like a puppy, summer freckles and his mouth pulled down at the corners and his hair wild because sometimes he sticks his head out the window, like a dog biting at the air. A fucking cocker spaniel.  
  
“What the fuck are you doing, quit making that face.”  
  
“Eddie.” Richie’s hand curls into a fist and he tugs at his sleeve, glancing at him in the mirror, pouting with all his might. “Eddie baby, let's go play.”  
  
“Oh my god,” hisses Eddie, jerking his arm away. “Watch the road, asshole. Do you actually, seriously want to go to a place named after a book I know for a fact you didn’t read, and-”  
  
“Alright then, I'll go to hell,” interrupts Richie with a shit-eating grin. “But I'd rather go-”  
  
“To hucking Fuck-” Richie cackles, Eddie scowls. “To _fucking Huck Finn’s_ _Playland_? You know the rules, if it sucks you don't get to pick anything til Kansas.”  
  
“Deal, Eddie Spaghetti,” says Richie.  
  
Huck Finn’s Playland isn’t much, just patchy asphalt and patchier grass, children’s rides in faded colour, spaced apart like they’re not part of one place, but a collection of islands. A tilt-a-whirl and a merry-go-round and a set of red planes spiralling, rolling over the air in waves. Eddie can see the Hudson River behind it all, glass-blue and bottle-brown.  
  
It’s free to get in, but Richie buys a roll of pink paper tickets for the rides. He gives half to Eddie, taking his hand and winding them carefully around his wrist like a bracelet, tucking in the end so they stay. His fingernails are bitten to the quick and the tips of his fingers are blunt and rough, but still neat against Eddie’s skin, and cool. Eddie thinks he’ll keep one of the tickets, put it in a shoebox with whatever green feathers remain from his feather boa, whatever other pieces of the road he picks up before they get to the end.  
  
They look completely out of place, two eighteen year old boys amongst a hoard of kids and parents. Richie, like a scarecrow, in his stupid denim jacket with the elbows ripped out and the beat-up high-tops Bill painted for him, smudges of bright colour, and Eddie in a cream coloured cable-knit, far too big and totally inappropriate for the weather, baggy black shorts, too short, and 8-hole Docs with the laces wrapped carefully around the ankles. Not totally degenerate, but a strange mix of soft and ragged. And in a kids’ theme park, in the middle of the day, amongst merry-go-rounds and carnival games and candy floss, they’re kind of conspicuous.  
  
“We look insane, coming here without kids,” murmurs Eddie, kicking at the grass. It's not even that bright, really, for a theme park. It's sun-faded colour and squeaking metal hinges and uninterested kids with gameboys. Richie seems more excited than any of them.  
  
“Quick, Eds, go sit in that tiny plane, it’ll be adorable,” he hisses, tugging on Eddie's sleeve. “Do you think we’ll both fit?”  
  
“You are the size of three children combined, Richie,” says Eddie. “Do you wanna get us banned from Albany for destroying literally the only thing it has?”  
  
“Martha Quinn,” says Richie, sagely.  
  
“ _What_?”  
  
“From MTV, pretty sure she's from here.”  
  
“Right, okay, so Albany has Huckleberry Finn and an MTV VJ, my point is-”  
  
“Eds, look, bumper cars.”  
  
“Holy shit.” Eddie grabs Richie by his sleeve and hauls him, laughing, across the park.  
  
For a long time, as a kid, Eddie didn't think he was good at anything. His friends had their talents; Bill with his drawing and his conviction and Ben with his words, his hands, the cities in his head. Mike had strength and softness, could spin a meringue as light as air and then throw a bale of hay like they weighed about the same. Bev could make ballgowns, if she wanted, but she could also patch jeans, darn socks, embroider delicate flowers on Eddie’s collars, and she stitched them all together too, with a wink and a laugh. Stan had books, soft pencil, brown string, his birds and his faith and all his love, hidden by a flat voice, deadpan anti-enthusiasm. And Richie. Richie was breakneck confidence and a thousand voices and he carried all of their hearts in his hand, just like Bev did, far more carefully than he let on. As smart as Stan and as sweet as Ben and just as fall-over uncool as all of them.  
  
Comparatively, Eddie didn't think he had much. Forced fragility and a knack for navigation. A useless inhaler and a useless head and a useless heart. And he told Richie this, fifteen years old and feeling sorry for himself, and Richie slapped his hand gently, like he'd knocked over a vase or spilled a glass of water, and then he took him out to the edges of town, gave him the keys to his truck, told him to do whatever he wanted. They'd swapped places, Eddie clambering over Richie into the driver's seat, Richie almost face-planting into the dashboard. Eddie had put his hands on the wheel, curled his fingers carefully against the hard plastic, feeling it out, like he might get to the metal bones underneath, and then he'd touched the keys, a push and twist, and something had roared under him. He'd crashed into a lamp post almost immediately and Richie had laughed so hard he’d exhausted himself and had to curl up on the back seat to rest, and Eddie had felt... better.  
  
He remembers this, climbing into a bright green bumper car, and it makes him laugh before they’ve even started. That he should equate some teenage rite of passage with... what? A different sort of teenage rite of passage? Crashing a car in Derry and bumper cars in Albany and a road trip across an entire country. Maybe they’re all the same thing. He’s good at cars, he knows that now. He practically built his from the wheels up, much to his mother’s horror. He’s good at bumper cars too. He’s at least a million times better at bumper cars than Richie anyway, who gets stuck in a corner in less than two minutes and has to be levered out by staff. Eddie laughs until he’s crying, until he's weak with it, almost letting himself get hit by some kid with rainbow sunglasses, and Richie shakes his fist at him from across the ring.  
  
They get kicked out pretty quickly. Eddie hits Richie so hard his car stops working for a full minute so he gets out, starts striding across the floor towards Eddie, swearing loudly and waving his arms, children in brightly coloured cars swerving to avoid him, staff members behind him, yelling. Eddie is laughing so hard he can't even put his foot down so Richie just climbs onto the back of his car.  
  
“Take us home, Eds,” he says, arms braced against Eddie’s shoulders, and together they glide across the ring, back to the start.  
  
Outside, the sun seems even brighter somehow. They both have big red X marks across the back of their hands, which they’re told means they can’t go on any of the other car rides, things that let you steer yourself. Neither of them care. Richie has his arm slung around Eddie’s shoulders and Eddie isn’t tired anymore, he's wide awake and buzzing.  
  
“Here lies Richard ‘Trashmouth’ Tozier,” he says, throwing up his arms, hands splayed, “straight murdered by three time world bumper car champion, Eddie ‘Mad Max’ Kaspbrak.”  
  
“Look, kid, you-”  
  
“As he is an obnoxious motherfucker, he will not be missed.”  
  
“Wow,” Richie laughs. “Straight for the throat.”  
  
They go on all the kiddie rides, the merry-go-round and a little train that circles the park and a set of boats that fly shallow through the air, and it’s silly and weird, but never boring. Richie keeps up an endless stream of conversation, narrating the lives of the people they see from the rides. He decides a mother being dragged along by three small children is a spy, because she looks a little like Famke Janssen, disguised in high-waisted jeans and ballet flats. He tilts his chin, curls his lip, keeps up a bad Georgian accent for one full loop of the boat ride.  
  
“Don’t test me, Edward,” he rasps, low and throaty, “I’ll kill you with my powerful thighs.”  
  
“Does that make me Bond?”  
  
“That makes you that navy guy she killed, obviously.” Richie hums, scanning the crowd again, picking out someone else. A kid with a green mohawk, secretly an alien, on earth to study human children. A set of twins, circus performers, acrobats from Romania. It makes Eddie feel young, childish like he doesn’t always allow himself to be anymore, because when you’re eighteen you’re always too caught up thinking you’re an adult. It’s nice. It wasn’t always easy to be a kid when he really was one either.  
  
After the rides, they get hot dogs with everything and cotton candy and they sit down to eat on a wooden bench, and Eddie swings his legs, digs his heels back into the grass. He wonders what Stan and Mike are doing. Maybe they’re eating dinner with Mike’s grandfather out on the farm or maybe they’re at Stan’s parents place, candles and books. It’s sweet, Stan’s mum thinks Mike’s the best thing that’s ever happened to her son, and she might be right. It was always harder to make Stan smile than anyone else, but when he’s around Mike he’s sunshine. Bill will be in an empty house, or may as well be, with his parents like ghosts, even now. He’ll be painting his thoughts in watercolour, on soft paper so the colours bleed together. Ben usually calls Bev in the late afternoon, the early evening, twirling the spiral cord of his phone around his finger, easily able to make her laugh, blush, even with a whole world between them. And Eddie and Richie are at a children’s theme park, in a different state, banned from the bumper cars and swinging their feet.  
  
It’s perfect, until it very suddenly isn’t. Until Eddie shuts his eyes and opens them and notices a clown. It has red hair and a silver suit and cracked white face paint and something about it makes Eddie feel short of breath. Restless and sick like he hasn't felt in years. Instinctively, he grabs for his fanny pack, his inhaler, and when that isn't there he grabs at Richie's arm, slides his hand down to his wrist, and Richie turns to him automatically, a needle to a pole. When he sees the clown he goes rigid. It has a bunch of red balloons in one hand and the entire day disappears into muddied grey, confused fear.  
  
They leave quickly, without saying anything, Eddie still holding Richie's wrist. Back to the car, Eddie driving, seeking out the solid comfort of a steering wheel. Something that knows his hands, like Richie’s wrists, like the push and twist of a bottle of pills with a childproof cap.  
  
“That definitely sucked,” says Eddie, halfway back and safe. Safe? It doesn't make sense to think of that word, not really, but Eddie feels it all the same. In the seat next to him, Richie’s knee is bouncing in time with something only he can hear.  
  
“Liar,” he says. “You loved it a little.”  
  
“You're driving tomorrow.”  
  
“Deal, Eddie Spaghetti.”  
  
Niagara Falls comes next, because of course it does. They’re not that caught up in doing tourist stuff, even though they've already been to Old Orchard Beach and maybe the oldest theme park in America, but both of them want to see the falls. Even if they’ll be on the wrong side for the best of it. They leave early, yawning at the sunrise, and Richie isn’t really a morning person, but he drives without complaint. There’s no cupholder in the car, so Eddie passes Richie his coffee when he asks for it, holds it when he doesn’t, a cardboard cup warm against each palm.  
  
They make good time and get to the falls before midday and it’s such a strange thing to see in real life, a sheer drop cut into a river, white mist thrown into the air. Weirder still is how urban it is, because waterfalls always feel like they should be in the middle of a forest or a jungle. The sort of place that takes days to get to, no roads, only bare tracks that people have to walk in single file. Mosquito nets and steel-capped boots. Eddie feels a little bit like something’s gone wrong, to get them there, so close to something so wild.  
  
They take the boat out, with a crush of other people, all wrapped up in clear blue raincoats. Sun catches every droplet of water in the air, throwing up rainbows and bright white light, with blue sky above everything and the roar of water, so loud it's hard hard to breathe. Eddie shades his eyes, tilts his face up, let's the mist fall across his skin. One summer, they built a raft, under Ben’s careful instruction, and they'd take it out into the quarry, three of them on the raft and the rest swimming or hanging off the blue plastic barrels that kept it floating. They'd anchor it at the deepest part of the lake and spend the day out there, diving off or swimming or sunbathing on the sun-warmed wood. Eddie remembers eating an orange, letting curved pieces of peel float away from him on the water, the smell of citrus oil under his fingernails. He thinks that the water here would chew up Ben’s raft, spit it out, but he also thinks Ben could make something better now. Strong and fierce and watertight.  
  
Eddie watches the water, tries to trace a drop from top to bottom, and something about it makes him think of the sewers too, and of the difference there is in water falling over something metal or concrete, and water falling over rock or earth. Like the difference between a cut lawn and the summer-dry grass of the Barrens. Something that exists without human intervention. Something that seems impossible and inevitable all at once. It makes his throat feel tight and his heart feel too big for his chest and he presses the tips of his fingers to his breast bone, hard enough that it feels like if he could only be brave, press a little harder, he might break through something important.  
  
But then Richie is tugging on his arm and his thoughts fracture into something sweeter, something less stuck in his head, and he’s at the Niagara Falls again and Richie keeps swiping at the mist with his hand, like he might be able to stop it getting on his glasses, but it’s obviously impossible. He tilts his chin to peer down his nose at Eddie, under his glasses, and Eddie laughs, pushes him, forgets about the falls all over again because Richie is a mess right in front of him. And it doesn’t take long for him to give up completely and he struggles out of his blue raincoat entirely, and opens his arms to the water. He’s soaked in an instant, his t-shirt sticking to his skin and his hair falling over his glasses. He ties the raincoat around his waist, slips, almost falls, and he grins triumphantly at Eddie when he gets his balance back. Eddie laughs and part of him wants to take his coat off too but a louder part of him doesn’t trust the river water and definitely doesn’t want to get sick less than a week into their trip.  
  
Richie jumps at him, slips again and flings his arms around his neck, almost spilling them both onto the deck  
  
“Eddie baby,” he shouts, over the sound of the water, “I fucking hate this waterfall.”  
  
“Get off me,” laughs Eddie, pushing him away. “You love it.”  
  
“I love-” Richie stops, shakes himself off like a dog, laughs kind of strange, kind of jarring, a sound that’s swallowed by the falls before Eddie can focus on it properly. “Let's get ice cream,” he shouts, and he launches himself back across the deck.  
  
They get ice creams and eat them on the way back to the dock. Eddie gets strawberry and Richie gets chocolate just like Eddie always gets strawberry and Richie always gets chocolate. At the gift shop, back on dry land, Eddie buys Richie another t-shirt, just as cheesy as the first, pastel purple and pink hearts, a cartoon waterfall in bubbled lines, _I got hitched at Niagara falls._ Richie loves it. Richie loves the weird looks he gets wearing it, with his hair dripping down his neck and soaking the collar. Eddie kind of loves it too.  
  
In their motel, Richie sits at the edge of his bed, lies back, and the t-shirt rides up over his hip bones, his belly button, and his hair dries strange and wild, flyaway. It makes Eddie’s fingers itch and he scowls at him from his own bed, sitting against the headboard, flipping through the post-it marked pages of the guidebook for the next stretch of their journey. Skirting the lake, Buffalo to Erie to Cleveland. Chicago in the distance, a real actual city. Richie hums to himself and Eddie can’t stop glancing up at him, at the curls of hair drying over his forehead, the split-ends that desperately need cutting. There’s a piece of hair caught under his glasses, between the glass and his eye, and he trying to get it, swiping at it with his fingers, nose screwed up, never actually managing to fix the problem.  
  
“Let me braid your hair,” says Eddie, putting down his book, because he can’t concentrate. Because Richie’s hair is annoying and his hands are annoying and he’s annoying.  
  
“Let you _what_?” Richie tilts his head back so he can squint at Eddie. Upside down, he looks kind of like a goldfish. He sticks out his tongue.    
  
“Come here,” he says, impatiently, motioning for Richie to sit down on the bed in front of him. Richie frowns, wrinkles his nose, does as he’s asked. He clambers up onto the bed and sits between Eddie’s legs. His hair is longer than it seems, because of the curls, and there’s warm light hidden in the black, like bottle-glass. Still not quite long enough to do anything fancy, but Eddie can give him a messy sort of halo braid. Saint Richie. Eddie smiles to himself, combs his fingers clumsily through his hair, starts.  
  
It’s a little strange, a lot strange, how Richie sits soft and quiet, between his knees. He tucks pieces of his hair over and under, not neat, not tidy, because Richie’s hair doesn’t really lend itself well to that. He hums under his breath as he works and Richie’s legs are crossed and his hands are tapping out beats against his thighs, or Morse code, or nothing in particular.  
  
“Why do you even know how to do this?” he asks, breaking the silence, voice pitched low and lazy, a sort of growl that hits Eddie strangely, gets under his skin, hums against the tips of his fingers.  
  
“My mum would make me braid her hair when I was young,” sighs Eddie. “I got pretty good at it.”  
  
Richie goes quiet again, measured and thoughtful. “Best thing she ever did,” he says, after a moment, pushing back against Eddie’s fingers, and Eddie laughs.  
  
He finishes quickly, because it starts to feel a little too weird. Or maybe because it starts to feel a little too comfortable. He tucks the final piece of hair in place, no bobby pin to hold it, but good enough. He folds his hands in his lap, scoots back a little, puts some space between them.  
  
“Done,” he says, quietly.  
  
Richie bounces up and off the bed. “Am I pretty?” he asks, taking off his glasses so he can flutter his eyelashes. The hair caught against his eye must have been pulled up into the braid because he doesn't seem bothered by it anymore.  
  
“The prettiest,” says Eddie, even though it actually looks kind of like there’s a bird's nest on his head. He shuffles down the bed, lies back, shuts his eyes. “Go to sleep.”  
  
“Will sleeping in it make it weird in the morning?”  
  
“No weirder than normal.”  
  
“Can I sleep with you?”  
  
“No.” Eddie gets under his blankets and tugs them up and over his head. He listens to Richie moving around the motel, the sound of him taking off his clothing, pulling on the ragged t-shirt he wears with his boxers for pajamas. They ought to stop at a laundromat tomorrow. Waste some time with coins and the soft dry smell of laundry.

They're more than six hundred miles from Derry and Eddie can feel every inch of it under his skin, inked there like a tattoo. The shape of the road, the sun, a feather boa and a pink ticket stub. He doesn't know what will happen when they get to San Francisco. All the others have their plans. Bev's fashion and Ben's architecture and Bill's drawing. Stan's imagined garden shop and Mike's half-real bakery. Neither Eddie nor Richie know what they're doing. Maybe they'll fall in love with San Francisco. Maybe they'll hate it. Eddie's about ninety percent sure they'll break there and he'll end up back in Derry, at his mother's feet, braiding her hair as it turns grey, and Richie... Richie's going to stay in California. Eddie knows that just like he knows how much it'll hurt to lose him. Well. There are two thousand miles until then. Almost enough that he might be able to prepare for it. 

Tomorrow they'll cross another state line, break through another sheet of glass. Eddie will drive and Richie will sing along to his music, point out the weirdest road signs he can find, touch the back of Eddie's neck. They'll stop somewhere lakeside and Eddie will marvel at the flat, clear water, totally different to the mass of thunder of the falls, and Richie will say that it's the same, the same water, the same thing, just a different form. They'll argue about what to eat and where to sleep and they'll call Bev, pressed together in a payphone, yelling down the line about how they're fifty four miles closer to her today, or seventy two, or one hundred and thirty six. It won't be comfortable, but Eddie's used to that. It's necessary. As necessary as air and water. Or maybe he's just being dramatic.

In San Francisco, Richie will stay and Eddie will get brave, lick his lips and dig his heels into the dirt, and he'll stay too. He doesn't think it's likely, but maybe he'll surprise everyone, even Richie, though he'll act like he always knew. It doesn't matter. It's two thousand miles away. Almost enough time and space that he might be able to prepare for it.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> richie is quoting huckleberry finn back at eddie when he says "alright then, i'll go to hell" ummm the t-shirt eddie buys him [is something like this](https://rlv.zcache.com/niagara_falls_wedding_t_shirt-rc7ceb29ec61e4df5a074ae81710673b9_k2gml_540.jpg) i know this is gonna be a slow thing but i'm v happy for the couple people reading this, i'm having fun figuring it out. please lemme know if i get anything really wrong about the states lmao. thank you for reading!


	3. sears tower and the art institute of chicago, illinois

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi just a quick warning, this sort of i guess discusses the aids crisis, in particular a couple of artists who died. nothing much more than mentions, but the implication of all of that is kind of. upsetting. and richie in particular is quite affected by it. so yeah! stay safe kids!

In Chicago, their first evening there, Eddie calls his mum. He's in a cramped phone booth and it's twilight and every inch of the booth is covered in scribbled graffiti, daisies and smiley faces and spirals scrawled with free hands. Awful stuff too, like the stuff written on the kissing bridge in Derry, stuff that makes Eddie want to press his fist against his teeth or bolt or duck his head under water and hold it there. He shuts his eyes instead, carefully adjusts his hand on the receiver, making sure he's only touching the tissue he's wrapped around the handle. He listens to the dial tone. He tugs at the belt loops of his jeans.

She doesn't answer. The dial tone flatlines and Eddie bites back the childish _mummy_ that threatens to spill when the recorded answer message starts. She recites their number instead of a name, because Mrs Cooper across the street told her about people getting stalked after random missed calls. Of course she doesn’t answer. Eddie slams the phone back down onto the receiver, kicks out at the corner of the booth. It overbalances him and he nearly falls, but the thought of touching the dirty glass or the ugly words makes him twist away at the last second and take his footing back. He shoulders open the door and stalks out into the twilight.

Richie seems to sense it hadn't gone well, because he doesn't say anything. He's waiting with food back at the motel, greasy burgers and fries that are kind of exactly what Eddie needs. The sort of food his mother would hate. She had strange rules about food, would buy every sort of packaged processed sweet thing, marshmallow fluff and Twinkies and Ding Dongs, but would balk at the thought of ever getting takeaway food. She was comforted by mass production. They survived on Lean Cuisine.

So Eddie eats his burger and his fries and he pretends it’s another sort of rebellion. Even more than leaving Derry. Even more than leaving her. Even more than doing it all with Richie Tozier, who she hates more than any of his other friends, except maybe Beverly. Not that that's the reason he's doing it with Richie. No, it was always going to be them, together. Eddie and Richie with ketchup at the corners of their mouths and salt on their fingers, sitting on twin beds in a shitty motel. Eddie wouldn't really want it any other way.

“You're disgusting,” he says anyway, wrapping up the remains of his food, the grease paper and crumbs.

“You too, Eds,” says Richie, batting his eyelashes, crumpling up his paper and aiming for the bin across the room. He misses totally, it hits the wall and falls down next to the TV and he groans dramatically, throws himself backwards onto his bed, hands over his face.

“You should be in the NBA,” says Eddie, grinning at him, and then he misses the bin too and Richie crows in triumph and they both fall into laughter.

In the morning, they go into town. It’s straight up and down, the biggest city either of them have ever seen, like something from a movie, and they spend the day wandering around, necks craned upwards, rows and rows of windows, concrete and glass, and then sky, so far away Eddie can almost pretend there’s another world up there, in clear blue. At the Sears tower, they take the elevator to the skydeck, and Richie holds his breath, cheeks puffed out, and Eddie shuts his eyes, imagines all his insides sinking to his feet, and then they’re in that other world themselves. It’s too much, almost. Too much space to look at all at once. Richie darts around the room, pressing his hands to the glass, pointing out anything he even vaguely recognises, leaving smudgey fingerprints and puffs of breath behind. Eddie blinks until his vision blurs, watches clouds, because they look so different up high, more solid, like tissue paper instead of cotton wool. Then he taps the back of a fingernail against the glass, tilts his head to try and see the edge of it, that sharp grey-blue you only find with cut glass, that shows how much space there is between you and the outside. He imagines it dissolving under his hands, the split second before he falls, when he’s just held in space, like a breath, and then gone.

“Hey,” says Richie, appearing beside him, startling him so badly that for a moment, he thinks he really is falling.

“What the fu-”

“Hey,” Richie repeats, nudging at him, curling one hand over his shoulder, pushing him down while he draws himself up on tip-toes. “Pick a place from here and we’ll see if we can find it on the ground.”

“Why?” mutters Eddie, but he doesn't pull away.

“No reason,” laughs Richie. The heel of his palm his heavy against Eddie's shoulder, and he's so high up on his toes he could rest his chin on Eddie's head if he wanted to, but he doesn't.

“There,” says Eddie, reaching forward and touching the glass again, covering a building in the distance with the tip of his index finger, a rust-coloured spire. The glass is warm and the day is warm and Richie is warm beside him.

They call Ben from a payphone before they leave, the highest payphone in the world maybe, heads pressed together over the receiver so they can both hear. Briefly, Eddie thinks of the way the colour of their hair is different, messy against the black oil shine of the phone, only a few shades between them really, but noticeable together. He thinks of his hands in Richie's hair. He thinks of it wet under a waterfall. And then Ben answers and all that disappears.

Ben is wistful and excited on the other end and Richie is insistent that he’ll definitely build a taller tower, when he’s a bigshot architect, and Ben says there’s already a set of towers in Malaysia that are technically taller, that Sears tower only has the record with the height of its radio antenna which, in his opinion, shouldn’t be counted as part of the architecture at all.

“Fuck off Haystack,” says Richie, cheerfully. “You think we’d call you from anywhere but the tallest building in the world? You think we’d insult you like that?”

“Yes,” says Ben, and Eddie can hear the smile in his voice and he wishes he could see it, like early morning sun. “You’re probably not even at the tower.”

“Excuse you, we climbed five hundred flights of stairs.”

“Richie threw up, it was disgusting,” says Eddie, biting back laughter as Richie elbows him in the side. He drops the phone to do it and then dives to pick it back up, and Ben is laughing too, all the way back in Derry.

“You'll build us a tower with somewhere we can spit off, right?” says Richie, when he's composed. Eddie holds on to his arm, to keep close, so he can hear.

“Top of my list,” murmurs Ben. “Just like old times, except the winner will be whoever hits someone walking on the street first, whoever gets a complaint made at reception.”

“And Eddie will cheat,” says Richie, just as Eddie says, “and fucking Richie will cheat.”

Ben laughs. “You hate each other yet?”

“Yes,” says Eddie, just as Richie says, “no, we’re in love.”

“Yeah,” says Ben, half thoughtful and half amused. “Yeah, that sounds about right.”

They get a postcard from the lobby when they leave, the skyline at night, jagged and beautiful, proof they were there. Richie scribbles on it while they walk, his handwriting cramped and awkward, ignoring the printed lines in favour of some other sort of order that only makes sense to him. It reminds Eddie of his mixtapes, the way he'd always fit lyrics or comments or stick figure comics into any empty space left on the cassette slip. He would get smudges of ink on the heel of his palm, along the outside curve of his hand, the ball of his thumb, and it does that now too, vivid blue at the centre, blurred out harshly against his skin. He probably smells like ink. Eddie wrinkles his nose, puts a little space between them.

Their next day is for art. A building all in white-grey stone, carved arches and flat shallow steps and green trees on either side. Flags and flowers. Eddie knows that Lake Michigan is behind it and he imagines he can feel the water, something in the air, like wind blown over the waves, even though the day is still and hot and dry.

At the steps outside the gallery, Richie reaches up to pet one of the lion statues that guard either side, dragging his hand down its leg.

“Quick, climb on my shoulders,” he says, nudging at Eddie aggressively and then crouching down, grinning up at him. “You can ride it, I’ll take a picture.”

“You wanna get kicked out before we get inside?”

“You’re probably too short to get up anyway,” says Richie.

Eddie looks at him, still crouched, still smiling, and then he looks up at the lion, and he knows he’s being goaded into it, knows he’s kind of losing just by doing it, but still. Still. Fuck it.

“Watch me, asshole,” he mutters. “I don’t need your help.”

It’s actually pretty easy climbing onto the platform. The steps leading to the entrance of the building rise up behind it and at a certain point, if you can get onto the railing, you can climb onto the cold bronze bass of the lion. Eddie grabs a handful of Richie’s hair as he does this, to keep his balance, and Richie laughs, reaches up to take his hand instead, guides him the rest of the way, touch light, the tips of his fingers at Eddie’s pulse. Then he just has to haul himself up a little higher, swing one leg up and over so he’s perched on top of the statue, straddling a two ton, grey-green lion carved out of bronze. His has an open mouth and he kind of wants to reach around, see if he can press his palm to the point of one of its teeth, but he also thinks that falling off a massive stone lion is more of a Richie way to die, so he stays where he is, hands resting in front of him, against the smooth curls of its mane.

“Suck it, Trashmouth,” he says, grinning down at Richie, who shrugs his backpack around to his front so he can pull out their camera. It’s a beast of a polaroid camera that Bill had lent them, indestructible, like any piece of machinery that spends any time around Richie Tozier has to be.

“Smile pretty, Eds,” he says, holding it up to his face. Richie always looks kind of awkward with the camera, because of his glasses, but he takes better pictures than Eddie does. So Eddie throws his arms into the air and Richie takes the picture, plucks it from the slot when the camera spits it out, hops in place as it develops. It must look okay, because he grins at it and slips it into his back pocket when it's done.

Climbing down is harder. It's awkward and uncomfortable, trying to drop down backwards. He swings one leg back over and his ankles, his bare shins and knees, knock against the hard waves of the lion’s ribs, ridged like there really is bone under the bronze. He finds purchase at the back of one stone leg, digs the rubber toe of his  sneaker into the lion's armpit, hovers there, stuck. He's strangely scared of falling. He can't see the ground, just bronze, and in his head he's in the tower again, hanging over the sky.

“If you jump I'll catch you,” says Richie, out of sight behind him.

“Pretty sure you’d let me die.” Eddie tightens his grip, one hand on the lion's ear and another over it's back. He must look absurd, clinging to the statue like a limpet. He's pretty sure a security guard will come soon and kick them out for acting like degenerates. Undermining the integrity of the art.

“It's like three feet high, you’re more likely to die crossing the street,” says Richie. Eddie can hear him smiling.

“Shut up, Stanley,” he mutters.

“Wow, okay I take it back, you’re gonna die stranded on a green lion, in the middle of Chicago, wishing you’d listened to your favourite person in the world who always has good advice and-”

“Bev isn't even here.”

“ _Wow_ , that was brutal, I-”

“Stand back, stand the fuck back I'm gonna jump.”

Richie doesn't stand back, but Eddie does jump. It's three feet, not the sky, so he drops down and the shock at his feet isn't so bad, just a prickle that he kicks out almost immediately. He turns, away from the lion, back to Richie who is grinning at him like he's done something important. There’s hair in his eyes and the sun behind him lights him up like flame.

“M’proud of you,” he says.

“Let's go look at some art,” says Eddie, dusting off his hands.

They line up to get their tickets, white card with red and black type and a serrated edge where half gets torn off. Richie tries to sweet talk the staff into giving them the student discount without ID but they aren't swayed. He takes both tickets and puts them in his back pocket, friends for the polaroid. He's in good mood, a touchy mood, bouncing on his toes and tugging at Eddie's sleeves and talking feverishly about what he’s most excited to see. Richie’s always been kind of weirdly into art. Or maybe not so weird. Maybe it's just weird that he's so earnest about it, that he doesn't feel the need to obscure it with bullshit, like he does with so much else.

Still, he doesn't look like someone into art. Eddie imagines those sort of people all in black, silk and linen, and carrying red wine. Velvet sort of people. Hardwood floor sort of people. Richie almost never wears black, hasn't since he and Bev's ill-advised goth phase when they were both fifteen. They wore matching dog collar chokers and teased their hair and painted their nails and it was kind of amazing but also kind of terrible and Richie had abandoned it when Stan dressed up as him for Halloween and Bev had abandoned it because it wasn't as fun on her own.

Now, Richie dresses kind of like an uncool version of Rickie from My So-Called Life. Bright patterns and ripped denim, sports shoes and embroidered bomber jackets, but with none of the curated style of a television show. No, Richie almost always looks like he’s rolled around in his laundry and put on whatever stuck. Like he gets dressed in the dark. Odd socks and clashing colours and then, above it all, his glasses, solid black over dreamy eyes, always peeling tape at the bridge where he’s broken them. He’s easy to stare at, Eddie thinks, even in an art gallery, surrounded by beautiful things.

It's an immense place, rooms upon rooms of art, everything placed up against clear white. It's too cold, Eddie thinks, the air conditioning is too cold and crisp and sterile. It reminds him of the emergency room, a little bit, the feeling of waiting for something. Like the real destination is just through the next door, only they never reach it. Or it would, if Richie wasn't so enraptured by everything. He keeps spotting new things he wants to see and running to them, dragging Eddie after him, spouting random facts about the artists and the meaning behind it all, earning glares from other visitors who think art galleries should be silent. Libraries of art. Maybe they should be, Eddie doesn't really know, but the rooms are large and white and strange and Richie falls in love with every painting he sees.

They get to Nighthawks and Richie stares at it, eyes wide, and he bounces on his heels, wipes his palms against his thighs, over and over, like he’s pushing all his energy out through his hands. Eddie tilts his head to one side, looks up at the painting, a diner, blue and red light, curiously out of time and place. Eddie imagines Richie there, seated with the rest, the broad strokes of his face, freckles and the shadow of his glasses over his eyes, talking with his hands, not so mummified as the rest.

“This is just like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” he murmurs, and Richie shoves at his shoulder, collapses dramatically against his side.

“Don't say shit like that in front of the art,” he huffs, and Eddie laughs, and they move on.

They find a set of drawings, clumsy crayon scratches against straight lines and scribbled numbers. Vivid colour, messy lines in the center of cream canvas, like kids drawings except no kid was ever so thorough in their thoughts. They seem deceptively simple, but together make up something perfectly hectic, perfectly dream-like. And some of them remind Eddie of floor plans, of the sorts of drawing Ben does, when he’s magicking up buildings, but made over with something bright and quiet and aching. Eddie smoothes down the front of his t-shirt, glances across at Richie who is sweetly charmed by all of it.

“Eds, it's _Twombly_ ,” he says, and he shoves at Eddie again, rocking him back on his heels. And it's strange, really, because for all that Richie's loud and enthusiastic about most things, he’s not often open about the things he loves the most. He has a smoke screen, in the way he bites his nails, in the way he chews at pieces of his hair or taps at the steering wheel, getting everything out with his hands instead of with his mouth, which is for talking shit, mostly, another sort of mask.

“You gotta stop pushing me, Richard,” hums Eddie, but he's gentle about it.

Richie reaches forward, curls one hand around the back of Eddie's  neck, pulling himself closer, until his mouth is a breath away from Eddie's jaw. “You don't understand art, _Edward_ ,” he says.

“I understand that you need to stop pushing me or I'll burn this whole place down,” says Eddie, pushing him back, palm to his cheek.

In the next room, there are two paintings, side by side, that Richie goes to like something’s pulling on his clothes. One is a white mountain against an orange-pink sky, almost fluorescently bright. Stark geometric figures, straight lines, climbing the crumpled hill, one of them holding a glowing cross, bright with dark lines. There is a rod at the top of the hill, similarly glowing. Eddie knows it, knows the style at least, those determined figures, strangely bright and vicious, something he’s seen printed on a t-shirt or made up in neon light.

The other painting looks like something from the military, a propaganda poster, two men like soldiers against a backdrop of sick yellow, painted words, _USDA choice sirloin steak_ in warning-sign red, holes blown open in the heads of the figures, plants and a boat and men with guns. It makes Eddie feeling itchy, strange, and then he notices the title, _queer basher/Icarus falling_ , and he feels kind of like he's going to be sick. The room seems more like a hospital than ever.

Next to him, Richie looks close to breaking.

“Oh,” he says, sounding faintly shell shocked. “That's-” His hand ghosts over the hinged rod at one corner of the second painting, so careful to only come a breath from touching it. “That’s David Wojnarowicz, he-” He chokes to a stop again.

Eddie stares at him, the way he squares his shoulders, like he's readying himself for a fight, the way he blinks rapidly behind his glasses, like he's clearing some thought from his head. Richie without words. Richie putting his mask back on.

“Nothing,” he says, after a moment. “Let's go.” He grabs Eddie by the hand, tugs him through an archway to the next room. He laces their fingers together and his grip is white-knuckled, so tight it's almost painful.

In the next room, he stops in front of the closest painting, stares at it intensely, like he might be able to override the previous room with something else. A change of scenery. A new coat of paint. He doesn't let go of Eddie's hand and Eddie doesn't mind it. He strokes his thumb rhythmically over Richie’s, squeezes gently, makes sure they're touching where they can. He watches their linked hands instead of the art, the blood coming back into Richie's knuckles as he relaxes, and then he watches his face, his teeth catching on a piece of dry skin at his lower lip, tearing, the pull and release of flesh. It blooms blood, messy red, falling outside of the bounds of the cut to the corner of his mouth and pooling there, and Eddie fumbles in his pocket with his free hand, for the little folded pack of tissues he always has with him.

“Hey dipshit,” he says, softly, and he holds up a tissue and for an instant he thinks he might dab at the blood himself, raise the tissue to Richie's mouth, but then he remembers that they're in public, that that's not something that they do anyway, fix each other's hurts. Not like that. So he pauses and Richie blinks and then smiles, his expression breaking into something normal again, more like him, and he takes the tissue and blots at his mouth, like Bev sometimes does after she puts on lipstick, and then he folds up the tissue and puts it in his pocket.

They continue through the rest of the gallery, but Richie is quieter than he was. Listless and distracted instead of bright. He doesn't know anything about the artists anymore, or he's forgotten, or he doesn't care. He holds Eddie's hand across two more hallways, through a room of sculptures made of wire and crepe, their palms warm together, and then he lets go.

Eddie, for his part, bites his tongue and tries to concentrate. He discovers that he likes Cindy Sherman's photos and Joseph Yoakum’s weird landscapes, the way they move across the page. He thinks Bill would like them too, dreams on paper, and he buys a postcard in the gift shop, writes out his thoughts, how much he misses him, how strange it feels to be in a big city with no attachment to it. He wants to mention Richie’s strangeness with the paintings, but he can’t. He gives him the postcard instead, let's him scribble a note at the bottom again, and they drop it in the mailbox out on the street.

“We should get a hotel,” says Eddie, as they walk. His voice comes out jittery and strange but Richie doesn't say anything, so he pushes forward. “I mean like, for real, with room service and a spa bath and shit, just for tonight. We can order waffles and watch cable. Do you even remember TV? Because I'm pretty sure it never existed, it was a-a mass hallucination or some shit.”

“I’ll only come if I can push the TV out the window,” says Richie , kicking out at the curb, gesturing sharply with his hands. “Like Keith Moon.”

“Isn’t trashing a hotel room kind of an L.A. thing? I don't know that Chicago's a... a rockin' city, Rich, who the fuck's even from here?”

“ _Rockin_ ’? Are you eighty five? And Howlin’ Wolf is from Chicago,” says Richie, rolling his eyes. “Fucking Patti Smith is from Chicago, Eds, even if her music’s pure New York. Liz Phair, she did that one song with the line about someone who fucks like a volcano that made you irrationally angry.”

“It’s just a bad metaphor, like... what does that even mean? Does his dick erupt, flooding whole towns with mud and ash that buries people alive and keep their corpses frozen for a thousand years?”

“Doesn’t yours?”

“Nah, mine just spews lava and and fire and people don't go near it without like... a park ranger or a scientific interest.” Richie laughs but Eddie still feels sort of like he’s walking on a knife blade, like if he stops talking Richie will get quiet again, and weird, and pinched at the edges. And they’ve never found it hard to talk, but Eddie isn't good under pressure. “Anyway,” he says, “she’s like... singer-songwriter feminist whatever, right? I don’t think she ever trashed a hotel room.”

“Get me cocaine and strippers and we’ll put Chicago on the map ourselves.”

“I can give you Advil and take my shoes off real slow.”

“That's all I've ever wanted, Eds.”

So they go to a hotel. It's not fancy, just the first place they find in their Chicago book that's kind of close and kind of cheap and will let them check out late the next day. It has a spa bath and it has room service and Richie had been briefly excited about the extremely ugly fake gilt buttons in the elevator, but he's quiet again now, skulking down the hallway, turned in on himself like an inside out t-shirt, washing waiting to be folded.

They get into the room and Richie heads straight for one of the beds, climbs up onto it and then stretches up so he can touch the ceiling, just with the very tips of his fingers. Eddie watches him, the way he keeps licking at the split of his lip, like he's checking it's still there. He doesn't know what to do. And it's not like he hasn't seen Richie sad, Richie angry, Richie every sort of emotion there is, but he’s never known what to do then either. He always just... watches.

“I know I'm beautiful but stop fucking staring,” says Richie, suddenly, like he's reading Eddie's mind.

“You want waffles?” Eddie grabs the phone before Richie can answer, dials room service, order waffles and ice cream while Richie starts to jump on his bed, arms still raised. The heels of his palms thud against the ceiling, a muffled juddering sound. Eddie thinks he’ll take the skin off his hands if he's not careful, wonders whether he has the right band-aids for that. They'd have to be big and square and durable, to keep Richie from picking them to bits. When he realises the dial tone is sounding, he puts the phone down.

Eddie climbs up onto the bed with Richie while they wait and Richie doesn't say anything at first, just holds out his hand. Eddie takes it, and they jump together, awkward and out of synch, and the springs of the bed creak crazily and Richie's hand is cold and his grip is tight.

“Those paintings,” he says, eventually, in between bounces. Eddie tries to nod, but it turns out it's kind of a hard thing to do while jumping, all caught in his throat and clavicle. “Both of those guys died of AIDs. Someone scattered Wojnarowicz's ashes at the White House this year.”

Eddie thinks of skin stretched over bones, so thin it's almost transparent, the hollow of eye sockets. He thinks of toxoplasmosis, death by kitten shit, like the guy in Trainspotting, which he’d read in fascinated horror the year before. He'd been so caught up in it that Bill and Mike had staged a sort of intervention, played him all their old favourite movies one weekend, forty eight hours straight, to get it out of his system. They've both stopped bouncing. The duvet feels cold and damp under his feet. Richie is staring at the ceiling.

“I... I'm sorry,” says Eddie, stupidly, because he doesn't know what else to say.

“Yeah,” says Richie. “It's fucked. I’m gonna take a bath.”

He let's go of Eddie's hand and jumps off the bed and disappears into the bathroom. A minute later, the water starts running, hollow-sounding through the wall. Eddie drops onto his butt, shuffles back until he's sitting against the wall. He presses his thumb into the palm of his other hand. He reaches down, pulls his socks up until they're neat, straight, yellow stripes lined up across his shins. There's something crawling up his throat. Drywall or paint or sickness. The sound of water stops and Eddie picks up the phone again.

Bev answers after two rings and the sound of her voice is so familiar, such a relief that Eddie feels weak with it.

“Bev,” he says, kind of breathless. “Bev, remember when you first left and I'd call you after school sometimes?”

“Sure, to bitch about Richie. You doing that now?”

“I didn't bitch, I just-and _no_ , Richie's fine-I... I mean the times I'd call from Bill's because I wanted to talk to my mum about... me... and you knew how bad that'd go so you’d let me talk to you instead.”

“Oh.” Bev is silent for a moment. “You doing _that_ now?”

“No.” Eddie fiddles with the phone cord, a dark green spiral that sticks to his skin. Not the same as a dirty phone booth with evil things scrawled across the walls and an empty dial tone. Not the same as Sears Tower, tucked against Richie's side and laughing. He used to call Bev and come out to her, over and over again, to get it out of his system, so he wouldn't want to tell his mum so badly. “No, I mean my mum... she's ignoring me anyway, she’s definitely disowned me, but y’know, what’s... what’s surprising about that, right? I just. I miss you, Bev.”

“I miss you too, darling.” She says it like _daahing_ , has called all of them that since she was fourteen and obsessed with Eva Gabor in some old sitcom only she and Richie found funny. If Ben is sunrise, she’s sunset, a darker sort of warmth, and together they're a whole day of sun. “Are you okay? You don’t sound okay.”

“I’m fine.” He plucks at the duvet, an ugly heavy bronze colour. He crosses his ankles, uncrosses them. “You know anywhere I can take Richie in Chicago?”

“Oh my god, like for a date?”

“No, shut up, just... I think he’s sad.”

Bev hums thoughtfully, and Eddie can hear her moving, all the way in San Francisco, her steps against a wooden floor, the gentle scrape of glass against a bench. She’ll hook her hair behind her ear while she’s thinking, wrinkle her nose, maybe curl one hand against her face, tap at the bridge of her cheekbone with her index and middle fingers. Or maybe all of her habits have changed since Eddie saw her last.

“Take him to Hollywood beach,” she says, after a minute. “Good for two boys on a date. Good for making someone happy too, I think.”

“Okay,” says Eddie, ignoring the date part, because Bev’s been running that same line for years. “Hollywood beach.”

“Yeah. You sure you're okay, Eddie?”

“I'm perfect.” He looks at the closed door to the bathroom, reaches over to turn the bedside lamp on, holds his hand over the bulb so the outlines of his bones are visible, the red and black core of him. There’s a knock on the door. “I gotta go, Bev, room service is here.”

“Room service? You rich now Kasbrak?”

“Shut up, it's just waffles, it’s just one night.”

“It's good,” she laughs. “I’m glad you're getting room service. Look after yourself okay, darling? Not just Richie.”

“Sure, yeah.”

“Tell him the same thing.”

“Thanks, mum.”

“Say that again and I’ll kick your ass, I swear to God Mike’s the only one of you that's not a total lost cause.”

Eddie laughs. “Love you, Bev.”

“Love you too, kid, go eat your waffles.”

The waffles are under a silver dome, kind of tarnished, with a fingertip dent by one of the handles. It's weirdly reassuring, like something from a thrift store, and Eddie polishes it carefully with the hem of his t-shirt, before uncovering the food. Waffles and syrup and french vanilla ice cream.

Richie comes back a little later and he's Richie again, with the ends of his hair dripping down his neck to his t-shirt, fumbling with his glasses and putting them on even though they fog up instantly, the cut on his lip the only reminder that anything had been wrong at all. It always happens like this, he flicks a switch and anything weird, the tension in his shoulders or his silence or the strain in his jaw, all of it disappears as quickly as it came. And Eddie isn't stupid enough to think that it's fine now, not really, but all of them have some remnant of their childhood, even if they don't remember it. Stan has nightmares so bad he sometimes doesn't sleep for days. Bill’s stutter comes back, worse than it ever was, and he chews up his mouth trying to stop it. Bev... Bev cleans her bathroom, bruises her knuckles, cuts her hair shorter. And it's not just that, it can't be just that, it's two paintings and it's an unfamiliar city and it's neither of them ever really having a home anyway, but Eddie knows Richie well enough not to push it.

He dives onto the bed next to Eddie, dips his finger into the small bowl of half melted ice cream, licks it off, humming happily.

“You're disgusting,” says Eddie quietly.

“I’m lovely,” says Richie. “Lets watch Real World.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading! i'm sorry about how long it took. i'm very bad with. keeping to any sort of schedule. i think i was just v anxious about how this chapter would come out. i'm too self-concious for like. true angst. earnest whatever. i guess. but the subject matter is still kinda heavy, even if it's just implied. it's a whole terrible thing yknow? yeah. and i don't know, i think eddie would have v strange feelings about hiv and aids like. considering the way it was spun for so long. hm. fuck idk maybe this is super terrible but i'm. yeah. yeah. please let me know what you think. next will be hollywood beach, so much nicer.
> 
> some of the paintings they visit (and tbh most aren't technically on display but whatever it's also not 1996): [nighthawks, obviously](http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/111628?search_no=13&index=2), [keith haring](http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/146909?search_no=8&index=0), david wojnarowicz: [one](http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/184212?search_no=7&index=1), [two](http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/159822?search_no=5&index=0), various cy twombly: [one](http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/229371?search_no=9&index=8) [two](http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/186050?search_no=11&index=23) [three](http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/186049?search_no=11&index=22) various cindy sherman: [one](http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/212235?search_no=15&index=2) [two](http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/72699?search_no=16&index=13) [three](http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/229391?search_no=15&index=5) and various joseph yoakum: [one](http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/207568?search_no=18&index=7) [two](http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/115928?search_no=20&index=40%20) [three](http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/207573?search_no=19&index=11)
> 
> the show with eva gabor is green acres and it's [perfect and beautiful](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjPR31-gIRg)
> 
> the song with the line about fucking like a volcano is called [supernova](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tM60GAPIXTY) and richie has almost definitely serenaded eddie with it before


	4. hollywood beach, chicago, illinois

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i was 3/4 finished before i realised shit fountain didn't exist til 2005 or something. pls pretend like it's existed for at least ten more years than that. thank you.

They stay in Chicago longer than they’d planned. Eddie still feels a bit like he’s walking on eggshells and Richie is still kind of subdued, as subdued as Richie ever is, and spending all day in a car seems a little bit like letting a wound fester. So they go to the Field Museum and hum the Jurassic Park score in the dinosaur rooms, quiet at first but louder with every step they take, and they go to shit fountain and waste almost a whole pack of polaroid film taking dramatically posed pictures with it, Richie’s hand held thoughtfully to his chin and Eddie’s brow furrowed, and on their last day there, they go to the Shedd Aquarium and play a game.  
  
“Oh fuck, fuck Richie I win, I definitely win, look at that thing.” Eddie points excitedly at a lumpy yellow blob hovering near the bottom of the tank. “That is easily the ugliest fish I’ve ever seen.”

“What _is_ it? Richie asks, joining him to stare, expression dubious. “I think it’s a sponge, sponges don’t count.”

Eddie, shaking his head, turns away, to the sign describing all the fish in the exhibit.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he says, “I present to you the... the longlure frogfish, Antennarius multiocellatus, ugliest fish in the Shedd aquarium.”

“Okay, okay, don’t get ahead of yourself Eds, your frogfish-”

“Richie Junior.”

“Richie Junior,” Richie continues, without missing a beat, “my first born son, has to go through the judging process just like any of them, this isn’t a fucking charity contest.”

“Oh my god, he’s obviously the winner, he’s literally a lump of vomit, you’re-”

“Full marks for physical ugliness, sure, okay, but his moral ugliness is currently undetermined.”

“He’s camouflaged himself as a sponge and he’s got a little fishing line on his head for luring other fishes to their death,” says Eddie, tapping furiously at the sign. “These fish eat their own babies, Richie, he’s got plenty of moral ugliness.”

“Just like his dad,” says Richie, fondly. “Fuck, fine, unless we find something truly spectacular before the end, Richie Junior is the winner of the 1996 Chicago pageant of aquatic ugliness, congratulations.”

“What’s my prize?” Eddie knows what he’s gonna say. It’s always the same, whatever’s in his pocket or a kiss.

“Seventy five cents and a ticket stub to the Shedd aquarium,” says Richie, holding his hand out flat, dirty coins and a crumpled paper, “or a kiss.” He leers extravagantly.

Eddie rolls his eyes. “Gross, keep it,” he says, pushing passed him. “Let’s go see the piranhas.”

They continue through the aquarium and Richie presses his face up against the glass of one of the tanks and knocks his glasses off and Eddie is startled into hysterics by a bunch of tiny yellow and white eels, sprouting up from the sand like striped reeds, and they leave early after being told off by security for swearing too much around kids, which isn’t inaccurate, but it is annoying.

They go to the beach after that. Hollywood beach, because Eddie kind of thinks they have too. Not a date, just a nice place to go.

It’s gold and iron, completely different to the beach they visited in Portland. There are buildings on the shore, squared and tall and grey against the sky, and the sand is the colour of French vanilla ice cream. It's late in the afternoon and the sun is falling, but it's crowded still. The south end of the beach. Rainbows and Speedos and the threat of skin cancer in every oiled tan. Eddie puts on sunscreen, smears the leftover cream down Richie's arm, making him screw up his face.

They swim, for a little while, in the cold still lake. Richie always looks kind of weird without his glasses, kind of naked, kind of open, kind of bright. His freckles stand out starkly against his skin, across his face, over the slope of his shoulders, like the water has washed him clearer. Eddie throws himself in as deep as he can, as fast as he can, but Richie, screaming, charges passed him immediately. Because he's taller, can fight the tide better. Whatever. Eddie crouches down in the shallows instead, picks up a handful of wet sand, coarse and slippery. Different to the quarry, the school pool, the sand at the edges of the ocean in Portland. Lake sand is colder maybe, more distinctly formed, larger grained and more annoying under fingernails.

Richie is up to his armpits in the water, jumping into each wave as it rolls towards the shore.

“Eds!” he calls, turning back to him. “Come out here.”

Eddie doesn't say anything, but he lets the sand fall through his fingers and heads deeper. He bounces off his toes, letting the water pull him up, enjoying the feeling of weightlessness it gives him. He reaches Richie quickly, but it's deeper for him, even on his toes the lake covers his shoulders, and every time a wave hits him he has to tilt his chin to keep from swallowing anything. Fucking lake algae or microscopic jellyfish or whatever other deep water evil Lake Michigan has.

“This lake has its own Bermuda Triangle,” he says, reaching Richie, bouncing in place to keep above the waves. “Michigan Triangle, I guess.”

“I told you that,” scoffs Richie. “And it's on the whole other side anyway, the actual Michigan side.”

“Whatever, you think supernatural evil can be contained by points on a map?”

“Remember when we’d swim at the quarry and you'd always try to drown me?” Richie grins, tilts his face to the sun. “You’re still my favourite tiny murderer.”

“Attempted murderer,” corrects Eddie, reaching over and pushing him, leaning into him, their wet skin touching underwater, shoulders and elbows and fumbling, slippery hands.

They devolve into splashing and play fighting, trying to dunk each other under, trying to hold their breath the longest, trying to dive down and touch the bottom with their hands, scoop up handfuls of wet sand. Their legs tangle underwater, the long skinny line of their  calves and their palms flat against bare wet skin. There's something so much easier about touching in water, maybe because you're already half-naked so it can't be that important. A hand on a shoulder doesn't feel like much. A hand at a bare waist or sliding along the smooth rise of a hip bone. Not much, just touching.

When it gets too cold, they get out. Full up enough with sun and water and skin. Richie's shoulders are pink, and the bridge of his nose and the tips of his ears. Because he wants to die at thirty of melanoma. There's a pale space on his arm, over his shoulder and down his bicep, where Eddie had wiped his extra sunscreen, and it reminds him of sports days at school, when they'd paint school slogans and song lyrics down their arms and across their foreheads, knowing they'd get sunburned, leaving the words cut out of their tan at the end of the day. A half-assed attempt at school spirit. He and Richie had conspired to draw a dick on Stan's cheek once, and he'd realised too late what it was. Richie had taken all the blame, had insisted Eddie had nothing to do with it, and it hadn't really mattered ultimately, because Bev just gave Stan makeup to cover it up, but he’d given Richie the silent treatment for a week. A cruel punishment really, for someone like Richie.

Eddie gets dressed, pulls his t-shirt on and tugs at the fabric until it sticks a little less to his skin. Richie doesn't bother, just throws a towel around his neck and puts on his glasses and grins, squinting against the sun. It's close to setting now, throwing lines across the sky in purpled grey and orange. Eddie wants to leave, thinks it might be perfect, drifting out of the city with the sunset behind them. Richie seems less freaked than he has in days, too. Maybe the water has cleaned him out.

Still, there's daylight left, so they wander around at the crest of beach, where the sand meets concrete and there are cute little shops, lit up yellow and green. Two drag queens, Betty and Veronica in pink and red and bangs, greet them on the boardwalk. They’re on their way to work, all legs and eyelashes and a scent like jasmine and vanilla, and they give Richie an autographed polaroid, a bar name stamped on the back. Richie is enamoured and they talk for several minutes and Eddie thinks they're beautiful, sparkled and vivid and dedicated. He wonders how long it takes to do the makeup, how many years of practice, how much of it has to be kept hidden from people, family even. Small trays of colour and baby wipes and little mirrors set in gold compacts, ridged like seashells.

“I'm gonna start doing that,” says Richie, when they say their goodbyes, head off in different directions. Richie and Eddie back down to the beach and Betty and Veronica into the city.

“Doing what? Drag?” Eddie considers the idea, Richie with even longer eyelashes, his mouth painted mirrored scarlet. He grins and Richie shrugs.

“Nah, the polaroid, giving them out to people.”

“No one wants that shit, Rich.”

“Bullsht, I know you'd want ten. I'll sign them for you and everything, so you can sell them off when I’m rich and famous. But maybe keep one, just so you don't forget me. Something to stare at during lonely winter nights, like fucking Rosebud or whatever.”

“Definitely no chance of forgetting you, Trashmouth,” Eddie mutters. “With my luck I’ll be stuck with you forever.” But something must show on Eddie's face, because Richie's smile softens, and he knocks his knuckles against his shoulder.

“Don't worry, Eds, I’ll let you drive my limo,” he says. “Now c’mon, take my picture.”

“Strike a pose then,” says Eddie, pulling the camera from his bag. “Naomi Campbell.”

He takes a photo, Richie with the dying sun behind him, no shirt on, pulling the fingers with both hands and sneering. Not Naomi Campbell or the hyper-glamorous shot of Betty and Veronica, just Richie. It's a little blurry and a lot stupid and Eddie thinks it's kind of exactly right. Maybe they'll have a whole collection of pictures like it before the end. Eddie on a lion, Richie on the sand. Both of them crouched in front of shit fountain. Maybe Richie will keep them stuck to a pinboard when he stays and Eddie leaves.

They’re about to go when someone tries to kill Eddie. Or... well, someone’s striped beach ball hits him full in the chest and he falls backward and for a single, terrifying moment he thinks that he must have stepped on a stonefish, out in the lake, and the poison must have hit his heart by now, and he _must_ be paralysed. A freshwater stonefish. The Lake Michigan monster. A lightning strike. He gets sand in his mouth. He gets sand in his mouth and inside his shorts and he’ll probably never get rid of it, not until San Francisco.

“Who do I have to kill,” he mutters, spitting out the grit on his tongue. “Gim-hey gimme that ball, Richie, I’m gonna eat it.”

Richie is busy laughing, though, and he doesn’t do anything to help. Which is actually totally fucking typical and also totally fucking bullshit because they’ve been friends more than ten years, more than an actual _decade_ , and surely that means he’s obligated to help when someone makes an attempt at Eddie’s life. Whatever. When he succumbs to melanoma or the perils of fame, Eddie’s gonna let him rot. He gets slowly to his feet, brushing the sand off his palms, scowling at the little indents the grains have made in his skin. He looks around for the culprit. Richie is still laughing.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry,” says a girl, trotting over, tall and sepia-toned and sparkling. The owner of the beach ball. Pure evil. “Are you okay?”

“He’s fine, just delicate,” says Richie, sounding annoyingly fond, “not used to the great outdoors.”

“Shut the fuck up, Richie,” mutters Eddie, brushing off his shorts. “I’m not fine, I have a TBI.”

“You do not, baby, it didn't even hit you in the head.” _Baby_ thinks Eddie, and he scowls harder, crouches down to pick up the beach ball.

“What's a TBI?” the girl asks, looking more than a little freaked out.

“Traumatic Brain Injury,” say Eddie and Richie in unison, and Eddie can't help it, he starts laughing then too.

The girl’s name is Tara and she invites them to go and hang out with her and her friends and even though Eddie still wants to leave as soon as possible, he also misses being part of a group. He thinks Richie must miss it too. In Derry, they were never more than ten minutes away from being with their friends. A phone call and a bike ride. A phone call and everyone piling into Richie’s old truck, until it died a dramatic death and they left it at the quarry to grow into the land. Mike’s farm, all warmth and overstuffed cushions and bookshelves in the hallway, floor to ceiling. Mike’s grandfather had moved an armchair from the lounge to the hall, just because Stan spent so much time there, sifting through the books. And even though Eddie thinks that he likes being together, alone, with Richie, more than almost anything, he still misses the rest of his friends.

So they go with Tara. Her friends are sitting together, further up the beach, all in sunglasses and swimwear, towels held against their throats like capes, because it's getting colder now but maybe not yet cold enough for clothes. Richie and Eddie fall into their circle, awkward and smiling, and Eddie's kind of relieved to find that real people exist at all. It's easy to forget, he thinks, when you're alone in a car and driving. Or alone in a city and walking. Or together in a hotel room, jumping on the bed.

They're from all over the country, their small group on the beach. Tara’s from Indiana and Daniel and Kevin are from Minneapolis and Kate and Sojin are from New York. No one has heard of Derry, which Eddie thinks is perfect.

“It's not a real place,” he tells them. “It's like... it’s like if Hell was a small New England city with one movie theatre and fifty stores dedicated to like... racist kitsch.”

“It's unspeakably evil,” agrees Richie. “We killed a teenage werewolf there once.”

“No, it was Freddy Krueger.”

“No, it was literally Satan.”

“You watch a lot of horror movies?” Tara asks, pulling her sunglasses down the bridge of her nose so she can peer over the rim at them.

“Yes,” says Richie, just as Eddie says, “ _he_ does.”

“I watched The Exorcist ten times on a weekend once,” Sojin muses, pushing back her hair. “If I saw that little girl on the street I'd run away screaming.”

It gets colder still and Richie whines about it until Eddie finds his t-shirt in the backpack, smushes it into Richie's face instead of handing it to him, making him laugh, wriggle, bat his hands away and snatch the t-shirt back. He puts it on using his whole body, like he needs to feel the fabric against every part of him, shimmying his shoulders and twisting his hips and tugging at the collar.

“You look like a dying animal,” says Eddie. “Be normal.”

“You don't want me normal,” says Richie, hair and glasses askew. “You want me wriggling and crazy.”

“You guys are a cute couple,” says Daniel. “You been together long?”

“Oh, I, we’re not-” stammers Eddie.

“He's the cutest, isn't he?” says Richie, throwing an arm around Eddie's shoulders. “Best boy there is.”

Eddie is tangled up in his own voice. There are too many words needed to explain why what they’re saying isn’t true, so he doesn’t say anything. He just rolls his eyes and lets it happen, lets Richie’s hand curl over the warm cotton of his t-shirt, his fingers tuck up under the sleeve, against his skin, and the other couples move closer together, like they have something to prove now, like there’s competition.

“Okay, best boy,” says Sojin, “tell us about yourself.”

“Oh,” says Eddie, still stuck, “I’m... there's nothing to tell.”

“He’s right,” says Richie, airily, “I'm the only interesting thing about him.”

“Fuck off,” Eddie mutters. He tries to shrug Richie's arm from around his shoulders, but Richie isn’t having it. He pulls Eddie closer instead, tucking him against his side, ignoring Eddie's half-hearted struggle against it.

“Best boy there is,” he says again, quieter, mouth warm at Eddie's temple.

It's strange, infiltrating a group that seems as close as Eddie and Richie are with their friends. They are beautiful and friendly and close in a way that seems both inviting and alienating. They have in-jokes, turns of phrase, ways of saying things that they share, and gestures, and expressions. Eddie wonders how much of Richie is in his face, his words, how much of Mike or Bill or Bev. Maybe he's just an amalgamation of all of them, _there's nothing to tell_ , but he hopes not.

Still, he doesn't say much. He drifts back from Richie a little, digs his hands into the sand, lets palmfuls fall through the gaps between his fingers, over his crossed knees, slippery and gold.

They stay until it's darker and the sky is a colour of a bruise. Richie takes an offered cigarette and Eddie watches the thin skin of his lip stick to the paper. The split is is mostly healed, just a stripe of darker red at the centre. If he fucks with it it'll bleed though, it could split back open with a kiss. He’s talking animatedly, waving his hands and laughing and bright, and Eddie can’t bring himself to be the same. His palms are itching with the want to leave, to get out of the city before they're stuck there, and he's very conscious of the fact that they're lying. He and Richie are a pair, but not a couple. Fuck. It doesn't matter, does it? It's one night on a beach. It doesn't matter. He could kiss Richie and it wouldn't matter. Split his lip. He looks at the sky instead, listens to the night start.

Tara has a laugh like a bell and Kate gets words muddled up and Kevin bursts into song at random intervals, out of tune and messy, something that kind of reminds Eddie of Richie. Their group is heading back to New York, to live together in some kind of artist space. Daniel makes music videos for Kate’s weird droney girl group and Sojin paints miniature landscapes on matchboxes and Tara and Kevin make clothes. Eddie thinks it sounds kind of nightmarish, a whole house of artists, but that's none of his business.

He leans back, pushes his hands through the sand like he's kneading bread, something Mike taught them all but only Ben had the patience for. He imagines he can feel every grain, imagines he can feel himself in that way too, split up into atoms, every one of them filled up with something different. He feels like that something, split up into too many things to count. All the parts of have friends and then whatever's left over for himself. The sand is dry against his skin, not close enough to the water to be damp with it. And then. Then Richie's hand is there too, under the sand next to his, and Eddie feels it moving before they touch, a hint of a landslide and then their thumbs touching. Eddie tries hard not to freeze unnaturally. He focuses on his knees, his bare feet, the glow from the lamp they have, propped up in the sand. Daniel and Kevin are leaning against one another, they’re holding hands. Eddie tilts his head back to look at the sky, the soft colour of it, the stars coming out, the lights of buildings. He moves his hand, down the line of Richie's fingers, still under sand, curls their index fingers together. Richie doesn't miss a beat. He's talking about some movie, John Carpenter, The Thing, and he’s using his free hand to gesture wildly, only free because Eddie isn't touching him. Eddie wonders what would happen if he curled the rest of their fingers together, took Richie's hand like Daniel has Kevin’s, staying quiet and hidden, buried behind them in the beach. Probably nothing. Because they hold hands all the times. It's... Eddie knows it's one of Richie's favourite things, and he'd always do it, not just with him, with Bill and Mike and the others too. Hold their hand and swing and-. Or maybe it's just like touching in the water, an inconsequential sort of touch. Just part of being boyfriends for a night. Eddie clears his throat, pulls his hand out of the sand and away from Richie. No one says anything.

They stay until Richie's yawning, sleepy eyed and slow moving. The beach is almost empty now, only footprints left, cut carelessly into the sand. Eddie gets to his feet, brushes off the back of his shorts and the bottom of his backpack. Richie is holding his arms up, grabby hands, like a toddler, and Eddie laughs and does as he's asked and pulls Richie up beside him. Richie keeps one of his hands, braids their fingers together, drags his thumb up to Eddie's wrist and holds it there, against his pulse.

“Hey, wait,” he says, suddenly, pulling Eddie to face him, “Eddie baby give me the photo.”

“What?”

“The polaroid from before.” He lets go of Eddie's hand to strike his pose again, rude gestures and a sneer. Eddie rolls his eyes, swings his bag around to his front so he can pull the photo from the pocket. Maybe it’ll end up on a pinboard in New York instead, with people they’ll probably never meet again. He flips it between his fingers, teases Richie for a moment before giving it to him.

Richie presents it dramatically, with both hands and a held breath, to Tara, who is laughing. “A present,” he says, “so you’ll remember us forever.”

“Where’re you though?” Sojin asks Eddie, peering over Tara's shoulder. “Best boy?”

“Give them your autograph,” says Richie, nudging him in the side.

“I don't want my name on that,” says Eddie, but he takes it back, signs his name underneath Richie's, a messy scrawl under Richie's rounded loops, black and red ink.

They leave, yelling goodbyes and waving and stumbling against each other in the sand, and then off and back towards the parking lot. Eddie feels strange, hollowed out and nervous, and he wants the road, the steady feeling of his steering wheel under his hands and Richie beside him, humming along to one of his mixtapes, but that won't be until tomorrow.

“I left my sunglasses,” he says, catching himself off guard, almost at the car, a stumbled lie. “I’ll catch up, okay?”

Richie shrugs, keeps going, and Eddie turns back. The sand is soft under his feet, softer than it had been under the sun, like the dark has made it as velvet as the sky. He reaches their circle of light quickly and Daniel tilts his head and smiles.

“Best boy,” he says.

“Eddie baby,” says Sojin, like that’s his name too, not just some dumb thing Richie calls him, has called him since a drunken performance of Santa Baby he'd done with Stan and Ben, wrapped in tinsel and swaying in unison. Just one of a thousand names he has for Eddie.

“Hi, uh hi again,” he says. “I was wondering if I could get that photo back. I-I don't have... I mean Richie’s not... it’s not like he’s camera shy or whatever, but I don't really have many photos that I like, y’know? So could I-” He sounds deranged. He _feels_ deranged.

“Chill,” laughs Tara. “Yeah.” She pulls the photo from her bag, just a scrap of white-grey against the gold-glow of their lamps, and she hands it to him. Richie, as he is, his shirtless, sneering finery.

“Thank you,” says Eddie. He pricks his finger against one corner of the photo, covers their names with his thumb, puts it in his backpack, along with the others. “If you... If you tell him about this I will burn your New York artist collective to the ground.”

“The things you do for love,” says Kate, sweetly, and Eddie flees.

He runs across the sand, heart pounding, feet hitting the sand so hard it feels like concrete against his heels. It’s not cold. It’s only going to get hotter. He gets the car quickly, and Richie is sitting on the bonnet, smoking one last cigarette, his own parting gift from Tara and her friends.

“Hey, you wanna... you wanna leave?” Eddie asks.

“Yeah, that's kinda what we’re already doing, Eddie baby,” hums Richie, blowing smoke into the sky.

“Shut up, I mean like leave Chicago, right now, drive... away.”

“It's dark, aren't you tired?”

“Yeah, no, I'm not tired, I want... I wanna go, Richie, I want to drive.”

For a moment, Richie is silent, and the only sounds are city sounds, night sounds, rubber soles against concrete and the hum of street lights and car horns. Eddie can’t hear the water. He curls up his fists in his pockets, shrugs his shoulders so his backpack falls straight. He doesn't look at Richie. He doesn't look at Richie because Richie is _staring_ at him.

“Okay,” he says, after his silence. “Okay, let's drive.”

So they do. Through the city and then out if it completely. Richie curls up in the front seat, tried to hold his knees to his chest. He's too tall though, and his feet slip off the seat, and he gives up quickly, just tilts his head back and shuts his eyes instead. Eddie watches the road, the signs sending them out of Chicago. It's St Louis next, maybe whatever parts of Route 66 are left. Richie’s obsessed with the idea of it, thinks it’ll be like Kerouac, even though they didn’t take Route 66 either. Eddie hated On the Road. He’s pretty sure Richie didn’t read it, though he got a good grade in class anyway.

“Hey,” he says, loud enough that Richie stirs. “What would you have said, if you were me?”

“What?”

“Like... 'tell us about yourself’, like... you're Richie, you’re loud and inappropriate and a not-so-secret genius, and I'm... I'm. I mean, if you were me.”

“Mm... okay, okay.” Richie turns on his side so he’s facing Eddie better. Eddie watches the road. “I’m... I’m Eds and I like cars and strawberry flavoured stuff and if I have kids I’m gonna name them Sparrowhawk and Angharad, because I guess I wanna traumatise them for life just cos I like fucking... I don't know what it's called, Earthland, whatever, weird books, and I'd fight the whole world for my friends and probably win and... and sometimes Richie likes me better than Bill, but not for the same reasons.” He’s half asleep, his voice muddled and slow. “You have nice hands,” he says. “You. Eddie. You... you looked nice in the water today, like... like you were on the verge of drowning but also... nice. I'm-I’m going to sleep now, okay? Wake me up if you need me to drive or if we’re stopping.”

“Yeah,” says Eddie. His heart is in his throat. “Yeah, Richie. Thanks .”

He keeps his eyes on the road. He keeps his hands at ten and two. St Louis is next. Maybe the Meramec Caverns. Maybe just more driving and more heat. They were supposed to take it slow out of Chicago, go and see some waterfalls or something, but Eddie wants to get as far away as possible as quickly as they can. Not because of anything to do with the city, just because he feels different now. Or _something_ feels different. The way they’re existing together, he and Richie, in shared space. Or maybe that’s just bullshit. Maybe Eddie’s just scared. He has a stolen polaroid in the front pocket of his backpack, like a dirty secret. He has a stolen evening on the sand, as a couple, not a pair. Maybe he should have taken his prize, back at the aquarium. Seventy five cents and a ticket stub and a kiss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok ok. so as i mentioned, shit fountain is a [2005 fountain of a dog shit so](https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/shit-fountain). and im sorry about that sorta anachronism but fuck give me this one ok? ill never fuck up the time period again (hahaha this is a lie)
> 
> and i’m going on current exhibitions at shedd aquarium for like... frogfishes an the like. honestly there should be a website that has timelines of places yknow? like ‘these fishes were in shedd aquarium in 1995’ for important research purposes like which-fish-is-ugliest. frogfishes are cute though whatever. anyway thank you! for reading! and for waiting! im sure the next chapter is equally far away. [say hello if you’d like, and consider buying me coffee cos i'm dead inside lol](http://oneangryshot.tumblr.com/post/172646709912)
> 
> oh! also! angharad is from the blue sword by robin mckinley (also tbh i cant not think of angharad from mad max but eddie doesn't know that) and sparrowhawk is obvi from earthsea


	5. st. louis and eureka, missouri

Eddie drives for almost five hours and burns out just before St. Louis. It's not an unusual thing for him, driving until he can’t feel himself. In Derry, he used to spend whole nights burning rings around the city limits, testing the edges of their cage. Sometimes Bill would come with him and they would drive passed certain places, the Ironworks, the Neibolt house, the kissing bridge, and they never knew what they were checking for, just that it was important. His hands would be numb when he finally got home and he would go to bed and slide them up and under his pillow to get them warm again.  
  
Here, he’s not checking for weak spots or cracks in the world, and he's not cold, not numb, he’s just driving. Because it's easier than stopping to think. Until it’s three in the morning and they come to a motel and he's so tired he can barely keep his eyes open. The city glitters in the distance. Richie hardly seems aware of what's going on at all. He’s been asleep most of the trip, mumbling under his breath and shuffling around in his seat and being altogether distracting and annoying and... distant. A separate entity to Eddie. A whole other person. Asleep while Eddie drags his worries down the road, under the tires, for more than three hundred miles. They were supposed to take this stretch slow. They were supposed to go to a waterfall. Eddie feels chewed up and spit out.  
  
“C’mon,” he says, opening the passenger side door after he's paid for the room, kicking at the tire. “Bed.”  
  
Richie blinks at him. “Eds,” he says, sticky with sleep, and a smile breaks out across his face, dopey and earnest. “Where are we?”  
  
“St. Louis, almost. Come to bed.”  
  
“Come to bed,” Richie echoes, and he laughs, rubs blearily at his cheeks. “We’re not supposed to be in St. Louis for like... a year.”  
  
“Says who?” Eddie’s grip on his keys is almost painful, the metal teeth digging into his palm. “Because I was driving, not you, so. And... and there's nothing, I mean, what did we miss? There's nothing between here and Chicago anyway, so... fuck it.”  
  
“Fuck it,” murmurs Richie. He looks tired and confused and it's... annoying, mostly. Because his hair is falling into his eyes and his hands are soft and loose. Eddie knows that if Richie touched him right now, if he reached across the space between them and touched Eddie's arm, the inside of of his elbow maybe, he would be gentle and curious, and it would be.... awful. Just the thought of being touched like that, like he’s made of glass, makes him want to scream.  
  
“Stop,” he mutters, before Richie can do anything, and he turns away. He walks around to the back of the car and opens up the trunk, hauls their suitcases out. Richie follows him, doesn't say anything, just takes his case without a word and scrapes his shoes across the pavement as he follows Eddie to their room.  
  
It's the shittiest motel they've stayed in so far. Everything is gray or sepia, stained like coffee rings on a table. Eddie ignores it. He heads to the bathroom and washes his face, thinking that he'll clean the road off him, but it doesn't work. His eyes are gritty with tired and his head feels like it’s sinking into his neck. He brushes his teeth, spits, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. The mirror is rust stained, blotchy, and Eddie looks... pale and wired, distorted in the warped glass. Stan would have a fit about this place. Eddie should really care more too. About bed bugs or black mold or whatever the fuck is on the bathroom floor of a twenty four hour motel just outside of St. Louis. He doesn't though, he’s too tired, he just wants to sleep.  
  
Richie is already asleep when he goes back out, face down on his pillow, tangled up in blankets. Because he doesn't care about like... oral hygiene or not being disgusting. He's cultivating a particularly awful sort of morning breath. Eddie should really... Eddie should really think about him less. Just, in general. It's hard when you spend every waking moment together though. He sits down on his bed, takes the polaroid from the front pocket of his backpack and looks at it. It's not even a good photo, the sun has blown everything out and Richie's a little blurry, a smudged human being, bleeding at the edges like a watercolour painting. It's sloppy. He should throw it away. He slides it between the pages of a book instead, an old paperback he's read so many times the cover is soft and lined. He puts the book in his suitcase, shoves that under his bed, crawls between the covers, and falls asleep.  
  
Eddie dreams of sand, of water, of Richie laughing and the sun hitting his shoulders, splitting into beams of light. He dreams of reaching out, taking Richie’s hand and pressing his fingers to his mouth. He dreams of the road, running black and white under his feet, and of Bill, testing rust spots on a chain link fence. His mother, a smell like baking soda and old flowers, potpourri, maybe never even alive at all. Dead and gone. He wakes up to a door opening.  
  
“Mum?” he mumbles, struggling up.  
  
Richie barks out a laugh, a dramatic _ha_ that seems to bounce off the walls. “I wish,” he says. Eddie blinks. He's carrying takeaway coffee cups in a cardboard holder and he looks... bright, clean and awake. His jeans are more rips than denim, pale and jaggedly frayed over his thighs, his knees, and his shirt is brightly coloured linen, threadbare at the shoulders, patterned with something like eyes or scribbled fish, like a kid might draw, ovals and triangles. Red and blue and cream. And Eddie... Eddie takes a breath that shudders over his ribs and sticks, aching at the back of his throat.  
  
“What time is it?” he asks. His voice is aching too, rough and tight.  
  
“A little after eleven. I brought you breakfast.” Richie holds up a paper McDonalds bag.  
  
“Is it hash browns?”  
  
“Hash browns and bacon and egg McMuffins, baby.”  
  
“Fuck.” Eddie laughs. “I love you.”  
  
“Of course you do,” says Richie. He turns away, throws open the filmy curtains. “I'm awesome.”  
  
They sit on Eddie's bed to eat. The air conditioner is rattling but there doesn't seem to be any actual air in the room. It's stale and hot. Eddie kicks the blankets off his legs, pulls at the front of his t-shirt, unsticking it from his chest. He snatches the paper bag off Richie, who laughs and tips himself back across the bed.

Eddie thinks there's something magical about a McDonald’s hash brown. Crisp gold. A cure all, better than anything his mum ever gave him. He’s still tired, still uncomfortable, unsure, but he feels a little better after sleep and better still after fat and salt and fucking Americana.

Except Richie's brought him hot chocolate instead of coffee

“You'll get road rage and kill someone for not indicating long enough before a turn,” he explains. “No caffeine today.”

“You're definitely driving,” mutters Eddie. “So gimme.”

Richie laughs and rolls his eyes and does as he's told, sitting up to swap his latte for Eddie's hot chocolate. Richie's bad with caffeine anyway. Way worse than Eddie is. Like electricity. A whirling dervish. A fucking natural disaster.

They leave soon after, drive into the city, and St. Louis is a nightmare of dry earth and concrete and black tar. Eddie thinks the arch against the sky looks like a road too, curving up and coming back, keeping anyone who takes it inside the city. Keeping the river inside its bank. It scares him a little, feels sort of like what kept them in Derry, except that had been invisible. Just a feeling. The arch is solid and visible and eternal.

It's hot too, an oppressive sort of hot, and they keep all the windows down but that doesn't stop them sweating. Richie’s hair sticks to his forehead and Eddie thinks he'll have to peel them both up off the vinyl seats when they stop. The air shimmers over the road, making everything seem melted and sticky, like they might get stuck and be swallowed up by the asphalt.

They don't really even have anything to do there. Eddie still wants to keep moving, but it’s easier to ignore with Richie at the wheel.

“There's a museum,” he says, flipping through their St. Louis Lonely Planet. “Westward expansion.”

“Go west, young man,” hums Richie. He's said it a thousand times already, a mantra for their trip. Proof that it’s going to be permanent for him. “Fuck that, we’re living it.”

“There’s a cathedral.” Eddie taps at the pages. “Tiffany mosaics, whatever that means.”

“I’m pretty sure that place has corpses, like uh... old dead popes, like their mummified corpses on display or whatever, kept whole and fresh by Jesus.”

“What the fuck, that's disgusting.” Eddie wrinkles his nose, reads a little further. “This just says there’s a crypt, I doubt you actually get to see the bodies.”

“Oh.” Richie taps aggressively at the wheel. “I don't wanna go then.”  
  
“Well where _do_ you wanna go?”  
  
“There’s a bridge here where Escape From New York was filmed.”  
  
“And you think Kurt Russell’s just gonna be waiting for you there?”  
  
“Naked except for the eye patch,” says Richie, grinning savagely. “We can live out the apocalypse together.”  
  
“Romantic.”  
  
“Hey,” he says, like he's just thought of something great. “Hey Eds, wanna look up your boyfriend?” Richie’s voice is light, casual, but he keeps his eyes firmly on the road. His hands tap jerkily at the steering wheel. There's a tiny bell on his wrist, at the end of one of the braided thread bracelets Mike and Bill had made for all of them. They'd taken it very seriously and they all had at least one, now mostly in jewelry boxes or sewn into pocket linings or hanging from wind chimes. Richie is wearing Eddie's too, he’d stolen it one Halloween, slipped it right off his hand while dressed like Ellen Ripley, in a boiler suit and a perm.  
  
“What?” Eddie asks, distracted by the copper bell, a barely-there sound. Richie's question makes no sense.  
  
“Your summer romance. That ugly guy you were all over for awhile, wasn't he from here?”  
  
Oh, thinks Eddie. _Oh_ . “Sean? Are you talking about _Sean_ ? How the fuck did you even know he was from St. Louis?” He tugs distractedly at the frayed hem of his shorts, unsticks the backs of his thighs from his seat. It's too hot for this shit. It’s too stupid. “No, I don't wanna stalk some guy I knew last summer, Richie, what the fuck.”  
  
“Touched a nerve, did I?”  
  
“Go to hell,” snaps Eddie. His fingers itch. He’s still exhausted and he feels queasy from reading in the car and Richie is... Richie is fucking with him for no reason.  
  
Sean hadn’t even been Eddie's boyfriend. He'd been a boy... a friend... a guy he'd sort of dated. Sort of, because he'd only been in Derry for one summer, a year ago, so it was always going to end. Sean with dark eyes and light hair and a fast, quiet voice that made him seem perpetually on edge. Richie hadn't liked him, because Richie didn't like anyone infiltrating their group, especially in the summer. Eddie had liked him, because he was sweet and intense and he liked to be kissed up against walls. And when it ended, with the summer, Eddie had been listless for awhile, and kind of clingy with his friends, and kind of short with Richie, but not for very long.  
  
Eddie can't remember Sean telling him anything about the city, and it pisses him off that Richie would bring him up because fuck, it wasn't anything. Just some kind of comfort for awhile. Something that made Derry feel a little less shitty. Nothing to do with where they are now. And they... _they_ were a couple yesterday, right? He and Richie. For a couple of hours on the beach. It's fucked up. It's too hot. Every street they drive down looks the same and they're not even halfway, they still have... they still have so far to go.  
  
“Fuck this city,” he says, then. “Fuck this city, I mean we’re... we’re okay, right? Me and you?”  
  
“What?” Richie takes his eyes off the road for a minute, a flash of confusion, and his hands go still on the wheel.  
  
“I’m... I was confused about something,” says Eddie, which is the truth but also sort of... not really the point. “But it's... it's fine if you say we’re fine.”  
  
“Of course we’re fine, Eddie what the fuck are you talking about?”  
  
Eddie looks at Richie's bracelets, at his hands, no bell sound anymore because he's gripping the wheel so tight. He still feels weird, but they're in the middle of nowhere and getting in a fight with Richie halfway through a cross-country road trip might be the worst thing he could do.  

“Fuck this city,” he says again.  
  
“Okay.” Richie glances at him again. “What do you wanna do then?” Hesitantly, he starts tapping the wheel again and the bell starts ringing again.  
  
“Rock, paper, scissors to just... to keep going,” says Eddie, and he starts to counts down without waiting for an answer and Richie draws rock and Eddie draws paper, covers Richie's hand briefly with his own, and they keep going.

St. Louis turns from concrete to suburbs and then from suburbs to corrugated industry, petrol stations and parking lots, and then dry, dirty looking scrub and cracked earth quarries and the Meramec river snaking back and forth under the road. Richie tries to convince Eddie that they absolutely need to stop at a gun range, but Eddie is just as sure they absolutely need to avoid deadly weapons at all costs, so they drive passed it. He watches the banks at the side of the road, the striped colours of the bare earth and the prickly looking trees beyond them.  
  
They break down thirty minutes out of St. Louis, in a small city called Eureka. Eddie realises there’s something wrong first, Richie’s pulling harder on the wheel than he should have to and the air stops working and the engine sounds wrong and Eddie remembers something that he’s sure he checked before they left, but maybe... maybe he hadn’t.

“Fuck,” he says, leaning forward, like he might be able to see through the hood to the engine. “Fuck, Richie, pull over.”  
  
“Why?”

“Car’s broken.”

“ _What_?”

“Just pull the fuck over, okay?”

Richie does as he’s asked, pulling up to the curb when he can and stopping. Eddie reaches across him and pops the hood and then climbs out. The engine is steaming and there's a smell like burnt rubber. Fuck. He’s a fucking idiot for driving three hundred miles in ninety degree weather and thinking his serpentine belt would survive. It's hanging loose off the tensioner like something dead, a scrap of dirty rubber.

“Your car doesn't look so hot,” says Richie, sidling up beside him. “Or like, maybe too hot, I guess. Smells like-”

“Shut up,” mutters Eddie. “Shut up, I’m thinking.” His heart is beating breakneck fast, a hum in his throat and in his hands and under his ribs. An ache like he's going to break his jaw from thinking so hard.

“Smells like teen spirit, I was gonna say,” says Richie. His nose is wrinkled and he’s chewing on a piece of his hair. Eddie’s insides are disintegrating in the heat. “Maybe we can tape it up, I think there's duct tape in the-”

“Please stop fucking talking, Richie, because I think we’re fucked, I think we’re gonna... I mean, it was only a matter of time, right? Before this whole trip just shit the bed. Because how could we ever... how could-” He inhales sharply, staggers back a step. “I'm gonna throw up,” he says.

He doesn't throw up. He turns away from the car and trips over the curb, scraping up his shins and bruising his hands against the pavement, but he doesn't throw up. He feels like a heat wave, like the shimmering sick-making air across the road. Richie sits down next to him.

“You're bleeding,” he says, like it's the same thing as pointing out he's breathing.

“I thought I fucking checked it,” says Eddie, through the tightness at his throat. “And now... now we’re gonna have to go back.”

“Nah,” says Richie. “That rubber thing hard to fix?”

“No, but-”

“So we take it to the shop, get a new one, throw it in, head to fucking... I can't remember where we’re going to next, buttfuck nowhere probably.”

“Stanton,” says Eddie faintly. Meramec caverns. They were going to go to Meramec caverns and stand in a hollow chamber of stone and scream filthy innuendos to the ceiling. They were gonna go to the Jesse James Wax Museum and buy cowboy hats and plastic guns and sheriff’s badges. He's so sure he checked the fucking belt. Because it's summer and he knows how cars work so he fucking _checked_ it. But it’s spitting steam and hot to the touch and Eddie is... he’s tired. Mostly. Because what if they can't fix the belt? What if it's not the only thing wrong with the car? What there's a fucking head gasket problem too, fucking Christ, what if-

“Eds,” says Richie, pushing through it all, though he can't possibly know what Eddie's thinking, he doesn’t know anything, and- “Eddie, don't worry about it, we’ll call a tow truck and go to Six Flags.”

“What?”

“There’s a Six Flags here, we can go on the Batman roller coaster.”

“You wasted your pick on kiddie rides, don't think I've forgotten, Tozier.” Eddie kicks moodily at the gravel, resists the urge to kick aggressively at his tire.

“Fine.” Richie rolls his eyes, puts on a haughty expression, pets distractedly at the air, pulling on some Voice. “Fine,” he says again. “Whatever you want, just name it, it's yours, but you gotta love me.” He tugs on Eddie's sleeve. His fingers brush Eddie's arm.

Eddie frowns. “Is that... what is that? Is it from a movie?”

“Citizen Kane, baby.”

“Of course it is.” He thinks if he goes on a roller coaster he really will throw up. His shins are gravel-burned and stinging. _But you gotta love me_. “Anything other than Six Flags, okay? I don't wanna pick.”  
  
“How ‘bout a tow truck and a movie, that's easy right? A fuckin’... a Sunday walk, right? Is it Sunday? It'll have air conditioning, anyway.”  
  
“It’s Wednesday,” says Eddie. “There's a phone booth up the road.”  
  
“Fix your legs,” says Richie, and he gets up.  
  
Richie trudges off to call a tow truck and Eddie pulls the remains of the serpentine belt out of the still-warm insides of his car. It feels dangerous, somehow, to stop here too long. Like a town called Eureka could only ever be evil. Derry had felt the same, up until he bought his car. Bill had painted the turtle above the wheel, in Bev’s black nail varnish, and said, “you could leave now, whenever you want,” and it had taken Eddie a long time to get used to feeling that way, but he’d been right.  
  
He sits in his car and cleans the blood from the grazes on his shins, with water and a tissue, and then covers them with antiseptic cream and criss-crossed band-aids from his first aid box. He’d bought everything new before they left and it feels weird, piercing the silver seal of the tube, breaking the serrated edge of the band-aid box, like now that they’re open he’ll reach for them constantly. He doesn’t touch the inhaler. When he’s done, he packs everything up carefully, so it doesn’t look like it’s been used at all, and slips the cooler back under the driver’s seat.  
  
Richie comes back and they wait for the tow truck together and Richie tries to get Eddie to play I Spy but there's not really anything to look at, other than road signs and gutters. Eddie tries not to think of how easy it was to get so far from Derry. How hard it is now that they might be stuck.  
  
“I spy with my little eye,” sings Richie, “something beginning with C.”  
  
“I swear to God if it's the car again I'm going to break your-”  
  
“It's you Eds,” says Richie, grinning broadly. “Because you're capital C cute.”  
  
They get picked up and taken to the nearest mechanic and there's a queue, because of course there is, and they’ll definitely be waiting until the morning at least. Even though Eddie explains exactly what's wrong with the car. Even though he could fix it himself in ten minutes, if he had the part. He's still worried there’s something else wrong that he might miss. Like the whole engine is made of rust and somehow he hadn't noticed that for two whole years. If they left Eureka only to break down again fifty miles out of town, he thinks he’d probably just die. Just wander off into the wilds of Missouri and get swallowed up by a half-dry swamp or eaten by wolves or enveloped by a death cult. Going back to Derry would be about the same.  
  
It’s not like he can do anything about it, but it does annoy him, and Richie has to physically drag him away from when he starts to argue with the mechanic, who just raises his eyebrows all the way to his hairline, who just glances at the turtle above the wheel and at Richie’s jeans and purses his lips. If he refuses to fix it, what then? The longer they’re there the harder it’ll be to leave, Eddie thinks, and he lets himself be pulled away. And he doesn’t _want_ to fight, not really, he's just _._ Tired. Tired and sick. Almost always. He feels like none of his organs are where they're supposed to be. Like his own internal serpentine belt has snapped under the weight of the heat and the road. At least cars can be fixed, he’s not really sure a mechanic could put _him_ back together properly. He’s not really sure what’s wrong at all.  
  
“I know what you’re really worried about,” says Richie, as they leave, leaning close, reading his mind again. “Your coveralls are like, at least seventy five percent hotter than that shop guy had.”  
  
Eddie just scoffs, swipes out half-heartedly, punching him weakly in the ribs, and Richie tuts, like he'd been expecting more.  
  
They get another taxi and take it to a motel that isn't in their Lonely Planet guide at all, because the only things that are in their Missouri book for Eureka are Six Flags and a Holiday Inn that Eddie refuses to acknowledge because his mum was weirdly obsessed with Holiday Inns, even though she hardly ever left Derry. She had a postcard book full of suites from the seventies, all laminated wood and fake fireplaces and weird olive green carpets. The motel then end up at is far worse than any Holiday Inn, though. It feel swollen up with the hot, sticky air, like the doors might burst from their frames or the ceilings might sag under the weight of the humidity. There's a pool out the back, mostly empty, just a couple of inches of black-green sludge left at the deep end. There's a freezer full of ice at one of the building, mostly melted, leaking rust coloured water.    
  
Eddie doesn't say anything to Richie, just heads for the bathroom and shuts the door. Maybe they've gone back in time, he thinks giddily, staring at the water stained mirror. Maybe they're back in St. Louis again, everything looks about the same. The same rust and the same colours, sepia and sludge. No, okay, the St. Louis bathroom hadn't had a tub. It's an ugly claw-footed thing, but it's proof they're moving forward. Eddie feels sick. Queasy and shivery. Is a McDonald’s hash brown even capable of giving you food poisoning? Fuck. _Fuck_. He climbs into the bath and sits down, legs stretched out in front of him. He’s still wearing his boots. He knocks his heel back against the ceramic and then hugs his knees to his chest. Okay. Better. He’s not poisoned, just sick with worry. Easy. Or fatal.  
  
“Be quiet,” he mumbles, mouth pressed to his knee. He bites gently at his skin then pulls back, smooths his thumb over the damp patch left behind. “Be quiet,” he says, again.  
  
He’s not surprised when Richie knocks.  
  
“Eds? Can I come in?” he calls through the door.  
  
Eddie makes a noise, loud enough to be heard. He’s not even sure if it’s a _yes please come in_ sort of noise or a _leave me alone to die_ sort of noise, but Richie opens the door and comes in to stand beside the tub.  
  
“You know you’re supposed to put water in that,” he says.  
  
“I didn't know that, no.” Eddie runs his fingers along the edge of the band-aids on his shins, feeling out the seams, the difference between plastic and skin.  
  
“You’re supposed to be naked too.”  
  
“Oh yeah?” Eddie looks up. “Want me to take my clothes off, Richie?”  
  
“I-.” Richie laughs. His cheeks are pink. “Always, yeah,” he says. Eddie feels hollow.  
  
“You think we’re stuck?” he asks.  
  
“Nope, I think we’ll leave tomorrow.”  
  
“Right.”  
  
Richie sighs and then climbs into the empty bath too. He sits down at the other end, stretches out enough that he’s covering the toes of Eddie’s boots with his socked feet.  
  
“You wanna talk about it?” he asks. He taps at Eddie’s feet with his own. His socks match for once, but they’re patterned sort of like the garish upholstery of a city bus, so it’s not really a victory.  
  
“I want-.” Eddie blinks, frowns, shrugs. “I don’t know. I want my stupid fucking car to not be broken. I want my mum to answer her phone. I want you to just... I want you to take me to a movie, okay? You said we would, so... let’s do that. Or... I mean, we can go to Six Flags if you want to, but if we go on any roller coaster and you puke on me I’ll break your kneecaps.”  
  
“Sure,” says Richie, laughing. “We can go to the movies.” And he leans over again, like he's gonna cover Eddie's eyes with his hand, but he doesn't, he just touches his thumb to the ridge of his cheekbone, like he's smudging off dirt.  
  
They cross the road to the sprawling strip mall opposite their motel. It's full of stores that Eddie doesn't recognize, but which all seem to be knock-offs of real actual stores that exist in real life. Or maybe the stores he knows don't exist outside of Derry, that's probably more likely. The movie theatre is taller than everything else around it. Chunky and squat, but still taller. To fit the height of the screens, Eddie thinks. It has an enormous teal film reel stuck to the side of the building, a wave of tape rolling out over the entrance door, twinkling with lights even though it's not dark out yet. It's kind of reassuring, actually. It looks like every movie theatre in every movie or TV show he's ever seen; the archetype of a movie theatre, the place everyone imagines when they’re asked to think of one. There are movie posters on the concrete walls, framed in yellow light bulbs, and flat paintings of classic movie stars; Marilyn Monroe and Charlie Chaplin. Inside too, even the carpet is familiar; dark blue with curls of colour scattered across the weave, yellow and red and dirty gold. The smell of popcorn and burnt butter. An out of order air hockey table. Eddie tries to only step on the gold parts of the carpet, weaving doggedly across the floor to the ticket booth, and Richie, cackling, follows him.  
  
“Hey, hey, is Swingers what I think it is?” Richie asks the girl at the booth, winking outrageously, leaning heavily on his hands, pressed flat against the counter. “Me and my pal, my favourite person, Eddie baby here, we were wanting to uh... let off some steam, if you know what I mean.”  
  
“Richie, stop.” Eddie wants to bury his face on Richie's shoulder, hide his laugh, but he doesn't. He grins at the carpet. The gold is the same exact same shade the Aladdin had, though the pattern is definitely different. He crushes a piece of popcorn under his shoe.  
  
“It's a comedy,” says the girl, flat as glass. She’s chewing gum. Her hair is curly and red and it reminds Eddie a little of Bev, except that she’d worked at the grocery store by the pharmacy, not at the movies. It had been Richie who worked at the Aladdin, after school and on weekends, in a candy-striped uniform and chipped nail-polish.  
  
“That's a little mean, don't you think?” he’s asking her, head cocked to one side. “I'm sold though, you've sold it to me, really. What d’you think, Eds?”  
  
“Sure, I don’t care,” says Eddie, with a shrug. “Get me Jujyfruits.”  
  
“Okay, Elaine.”  
  
“Say that again, Kramer.”  
  
“Anything else?” asks the girl.  
  
“Wanna make it a threesome?”  
  
"Want me to call my manager?"

"I am so sorry," says Eddie, pushing in front of Richie. "There's something wrong with him, we haven't... I mean he isn't usually allowed outside, because he doesn't know how to be a human, just the candy and the tickets and... caramel popcorn, right Richie? Just, yeah, that's everything." 

The theatre is cool and quiet and empty. Eddie thinks it's kind of comforting, in a way, knowing that movie theatres are the same everywhere. Waves of lights along the walls and ugly patterned carpets that are always sticky and the smell of popcorn. He feels a little better as soon as they sit down. They're not stuck, just paused, for twenty four hours at most. His car will be fine and they'll be out of Missouri in the morning, on to drier heat and more empty space.

Richie crunches through half of his popcorn before the trailers are finished playing and he almost chokes to death on a kernel and has to go and get a Coke. Eddie thinks it's common fucking knowledge that if you buy popcorn you have to buy a drink because otherwise you'll asphyxiate and die, but whatever. He gets back before the movie starts. 

It's a weird movie, sharp and funny, and there's a road trip near the beginning which is kind of perfect. And one of the leads is... well he talks really fast and he's tall and lean and kind of an asshole, eyes like a shark and a smile like a little kid’s, and it's... _well_. Richie is obsessed. He echoes his favourite lines and wriggles in his seat and elbows Eddie in the side.  
  
“Baby, look at me, you're money,” he murmurs in Eddie's ear, fifteen minutes in, breath tickling Eddie's skin.  
  
“Shut the fuck up,” says Eddie, without any heat. They're the only people in the theatre. “Who the fuck is that anyway, and why is he so hot?”  
  
“He's my brother,” says Richie, “my identical twin brother. Now be quiet, what the fuck, I'm trying to watch.”  
  
In the dark it's easy to be close to him. It's easy like it had been easy in the water to touch. Because it doesn't feel real, it feels like they're suspended in space somewhere, outside of the normal progression of time. Whatever happens in the dark doesn't count, they'll step out of the theatre, blinking at the brightness of the day, and they'll settle back into what they were before. What they are. Two friends on a road trip with a kind of weird history of touching but also, sometimes, a kind of weird history of very deliberately not touching. Eddie doesn't think like to think about that too much. He watches the movie, a group of friends looking for love, close and encouraging in a way that he hasn't seen very often, with none of the usual aggressive competition that male friends seem to have on screen. NHL 95 on Super Nintendo and dating rules and matching fucking cars.

Still, it's sometimes hard to concentrate with Richie so close and empty space all around them. There's something written on the back of his hand, a scribbled word and a spiral over one of his knuckles, barely visible in the dark. Eddie touches the spiral, a fingerprint over a fingerprint, and then he traces the letters, even though he can't read them. Richie doesn't say anything or look at him but he turns his hand over, so his palm is facing upwards, and maybe he goes a little stiller in his seat. Eddie takes a breath and then takes his hand and in the cool of the theatre, skin against skin, he thinks that maybe he does know what’s wrong with him. 

 They hold hands for most of the movie, and nothing is different. Richie still can't keep still, still whispers the lines he likes and pushes himself up a little so he can nudge at Eddie over the arms of their seats, their held hands. It's easy in the dark, even though Eddie can hardly focus on anything but the places that they're touching. He can feel his pulse through his fingertips and he wonders if Richie can feel it too. 

“Hey Richie,” he says, through the dark.  
  
“Mm,” says Richie, squeezing his hand slightly, eyes still fixed on the screen.  
  
“This is nice,” says Eddie. He can barely breathe. They're under the dark and it isn't real and he can barely breathe. Maybe he really does have asthma. Why the fuck didn't he bring his inhaler? He touches his pocket with his free hand. There's one in his first aid bag, the one he'd hoped would remain unopened, but he’s fucked that up already. Richie's hand is warm. He’s always warm. Eddie thinks of the sand on the beach and of the ease of touching under water, slippery skin and long limbs.  
  
“Hey Richie,” he says again.  
  
“Mm?” Richie looks at him briefly and smiles.  
  
“You'd buy me a movie theatre right?” he asks, which is an absurd thing to ask, but he kind of thinks he's really asking something else. He's testing the edges of something he can't really focus on directly, because that would be too hard and too painful. Richie is leaving and soon there will be more than three thousand miles between them and a whole lifetime of bitten tongue silence.

"I'd buy you the moon, Eds," says Richie, absently.  

"Right," murmurs Eddie. "Yeah, okay. Okay, so...." His chest is aching. He pulls his hand away from Richie to his lap, pinches at the web of skin between his index finger and his thumb. "Whatever," he says, trying to keep his voice light, "you're making me miss the movie." And Richie laughs and the dark around them feels a little lighter.  
  
That night, back in the motel, Eddie wakes up. There are moving shadows in their room, like projections from a film, like a burned out title screen from a horror movie Richie showed him once, and for a moment, he thinks he's still asleep and dreaming. He gets up and crosses the room, shifts the curtain so he can see outside. The sky is lit up with lightning, but it isn't raining yet, just smoldering. He leaves the room and goes outside to the empty pool. He sits on the edge, dangles his feet into the hollow ground, kicks his heels back against the painted concrete wall. Lightning cracks the sky into pieces and the air feels charged with anticipation. It's weird, he thought dry storms like this only happened in the west, where the lightning would set the desert on fire. He leans back more heavily on his hands so he can sees a wider stretch of sky. He stays until the lightning stops and the air stops feeling so swollen, and then he goes back inside to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> anyway uh vince vaughn was stupid-hot in the 90s and swingers is kind of the best. you can see the part richie quotes [here](https://youtu.be/ZlEXOzC6vqE?t=38) (there’s a homophobic slur in the first just. yeah). richie dresses like [this](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/5a/61/0d/5a610d84192f74cc572138785c4b185a.jpg) for the halloween party mentioned and employs stan to give withering glares to anyone who asks him if he’s a ghostbuster. there's this [weird old movie theatre](http://auckland-west.co.nz/2010/05/10/faded-glory/) that i used to go to as a kid that shut down in the early 2000s and got turned into a furniture shop but it's like... still kept all these parts of the cinema, and that's what i based the eureka theatre on. the jujyfruits elaine/kramer thing is a seinfeld reference that you can see [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89SW_l2z--U). the citizen kane quote is [here](https://youtu.be/bQcygvdCScA?t=101). make of it what you will. 
> 
> um i'm terribly sorry this took so long. my life is truly a mess and i have the worst writer's block i've ever had, it's been kinda. an uphill battle. i do just want you guys to know though that i haven't abandoned this or anything and i have the whole thing planned out like, i know what's going to happen and how, it's just likely to take awhile. maybe i'll finish before the next movie comes out lol. speaking of, james ransone is the best possible eddie i could've hoped for and you kids should do yourselves a favour and watch generation kill it's great and he's great and i'm excited. thank you guys so much for reading, i really hope you like it, lmk if you do, and say hello [here](http://oneangryshot.tumblr.com/) if you wanna ♡

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! [i'm here if you wanna say hi an talk about my children, those sweetheart losers who i love](http://oneangryshot.tumblr.com/).


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